The valley lies in the unceded traditional territory of the Lil'wat First Nation, who have resided for thousands of years, but are now concentrated at Mount Currie.

Their likely objective was to discover a feasible route between Kamloops and Fort Langley that bypassed the dangerous waters of the lower Fraser Canyon.

The need became more critical when the HBC lost the main access to the Interior via the lower Columbia River after the Oregon Treaty transpired.

[4] The Douglas Road, which conveyed miners and supplies, was a trail upgraded in 1858 during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush.

[5] The now ghost town of Port Pemberton, at the head of Lillooet Lake and the hub of this trail, comprised about six restaurants and six huts.

[6][7] Hemmed in by steep bluffs and large differences between high and low water on the lake, the unsuitable site[8] is about 17 kilometres (11 mi) by road east of present-day Pemberton.

South of the port, Drinkall's Pemberton House provided lodgings and Otis Parsons (later of Parsonville) ran a general store.

The port and general area were named for Joseph Despard Pemberton, a surveyor for the Hudson's Bay Company and Surveyor-General for the Colony of Vancouver Island in the 1850s.

John Currie, whose spouse was indigenous,[13] was listed as a permanent resident by 1885, having significant landholdings with partners Dugald McDonald and Owen Williams.

Acquiring further land with his brother Bob, they sold out to the Howe Sound, Pemberton Valley & Northern Railway (HSPV&N) in 1912.

[18] Pettit, who had pre-empted immediately east of Pemberton, sold land to Charles Barbour in the early 1900s.

[19] The Currie household also provided meals and lodgings,[12] a practice continued by Leonard Neill, the beef farmer who bought the property in 1903.

The wife of William Tuck, the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE) roadmaster, was the proprietor.

[35] In 1934, the PTC store burned to the ground when gasoline from a lamp dripped onto a newly waxed upstairs floor.

By the 1940s, Taillefer's store had a phone served by the provincial government network which operated across the railway transmission lines.

[36] The Pemberton and District Co-operative Association, founded in 1941, primarily maintained a warehouse adjacent to the railway for shipping potatoes but also operated a small store managed by Mrs Prendergast.

[42] Brotherston and McNally bought Jack Taillefer's garage and Ford agency in 1952,[39] but the building became the first drugstore in 1964.

[43] In 1956, the Pemberton and District Credit union was established, and two years later, the Bank of Nova Scotia opened twice weekly.

[45] In 1873, a route via the Pemberton area was an option surveyed, but rejected, for the proposed Canadian transcontinental railway.

[48] After the company floundered, Foley, Welch and Stewart agreed in 1912 to build the line under the title of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE).

[50] When the first train from Squamish reached Pemberton later that month, passengers alighted onto a roughly hewn temporary platform,[51] and a weekly mail service began.

[60] The Lillooet Cattle Trail, built via Pemberton in 1877, rendered limited benefit in relation to its cost.

During 1914 and 1915, a 10-kilometre (6 mi) road was built from the eastern end along the north bank of the Lillooet River to Mount Currie.

[86] According to the 2021 census, religious groups in Pemberton included:[87] The village fortunes have been interdependent with Mount Currie for decades.

The latest trail connects One Mile Lake to Nairn Falls, a 1-hour hike in summer each way but can be used year-round with skis or snowshoes in winter.

[citation needed] On July 25–27, 2008, Pemberton hosted the Pemberton Festival, produced by Live Nation, which had a musical lineup of 66 acts including Nine Inch Nails, Coldplay, Jay-Z, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, The Tragically Hip, Death Cab for Cutie, Vampire Weekend, Metric, and Interpol.

Buses and shuttles were used to bring people from surrounding communities to prevent the first Pemberton Festivals traffic issues.

[citation needed] The second revived Pemberton Music Festival July 16–19, 2015, included the artists Missy Elliott, Weezer and Jane's Addiction,[112] with an estimated attendance of 115,000.

The Lillooet Lake Rodeo grounds at Mount Currie, which had double the capacity hosted the final years.

[117] Pemberton news is covered by Whistler's weekly newspaper, Pique Newsmagazine, published every Thursday and also available online.