Situated on a bench
overlooking the Fraser River and at the junction of Highways #12 and
#99, Lillooet is a small town located in the semi-arid and dry
southern interior of British Columbia.
Before there was a
Rossland, a Nelson, a Vancouver or even a Grand Forks, there was
Lillooet. The town of Lillooet dates back to 8,000 years when the
Lillooet First Nations people lived here prior to the arrival of
Europeans. Lillooet first came to prominence when in the 1850s and
1860s, it boomed as one of the main centers as a result of the
Cariboo Gold Rush. During this time, it had a population of well over
15,000 residents and quickly became a rowdy and rough gold rush town
and was home to several saloons and hotels. Because of this, it
received the distinction as being the largest town “north of San
Francisco and west of Chicago”, (a title that was later given to
Barkerville, Yale, Quesnel Forks, and to some Greenwood).
Lillooet is
considered to be the “Mile 0” of the Old Cariboo Road, where
several communities along this road located north of here such as 47
Mile House (now Clinton), 70 Mile House, 100 Mile House and 150 Mile
House are named after their distance from here. A cairn located
across Main Street from the Lillooet Tourism Information Center in
downtown Lillooet (at the corner of Main Street and 8th
Avenue), commemorates this fact. However, the actual Mile 0 isn't in
downtown Lillooet, it was actually located across the Fraser River in
East Lillooet near the Fort Berens Winery. This site during the Gold
Rush was known as “Parsonville”.
Lillooet was
bypassed in 1861 as a result of the construction of the Cariboo Wagon
Road built from Yale to Barkerville through the Fraser Canyon. As a
result, Lillooet's population declined pretty much overnight.
Lillooet boomed
during WWI when the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (which became BC
Rail in 1972) reached Lillooet in 1914, bringing with it a passenger
service on the railway's Cariboo Prospector and its famed Budd Rail
Diesel Cars. A railway station was then built in the 1930s, the
current one seen today was built in 1986, its location is south of
the Seton Lake Road and Main Street intersection.
Lillooet boomed
again between the years of 1946 and 1960 when it became a service
centre and home base for employees working for the building of the
Bridge River Power Project. This hydroelectric facility which began
in phases from 1927 to 1960, uses water diverted from the Downton and
Carpenter Lake reservoirs through a mountainside at Mission Mountain
via a series of tunnels and penstocks to powerhouses at Seton Lake.
When construction
was finally complete in 1960, 3 dams (Mission, Terghazi, and Lajoie),
4 powerhouses (Bridge River Powerhouse #1 and #2, Seton and Lajoie)
and a canal (the Seton Canal) were built as part of this
hydroelectric project. In order to accommodate flooding of the
Downton and Carpenter Lake reservoirs, several of the area's ranches
and homesteads as well as communities such as Minto City were
completly inundated.
This project was
considered to be one of British Columbia’s first major
hydroelectric construction projects. Today, this project provides a
generating capacity of 492 megawatts of electricity a year, (that is
about 8% of the province's electric supply needs).
Not only has
Lillooet experienced numerous boom times in its history, it has also
experienced several bust times. Historically, Lillooet's economy has
based around the logging, railway and agriculture industries.
However, since the beginning of the new millenium, Lillooet endured a
closure of the passenger railway service in 2002 by BC Rail as well
as a closure of its specialty plywood sawmill in both 2009 and 2011.
Nevertheless,
tourism has flourished as a fast-growing industry, mainly because of
its beautiful location that is home to clean and clear waterways and
colorful mountains, reasonable year-round weather (more on that
below), and relaxing small-town lifestyle and atmosphere attract a
lot of out-of-town travelers.
Lillooet was
incorporated as a village in 1946 and again as a district
municipality in 1996.
Since it’s located
in the dry area of British Columbia, Lillooet has an extremely dry
climate. Therefore it only averages about 400 millimeters of
precipitation annually and summer temperatures that often exceed 40
degrees at record-breaking proportions. Sure enough, on the 16th of
July, 1941; Lillooet and its neighbor to the south Lytton both
experienced temperatures of 44.4 degrees Celsius, a record that still
stands to this very day. It was this temperature that gave the 2
towns, the distinction of being “Canada’s Hotspot”.
The reason for the
hot and dry summertime weather is that Lillooet and other communities
in the surrounding region such as Cache Creek and Lytton, are
surrounded by mountains that prevent and block huge amounts of
precipitation from falling. This phenomenon is known “the
Rainshadow Effect”.
However, it is
normal for the Fraser River to carry cold arctic air from the north
furthermore, Lillooet can get an occasional amount of snowfall from
October to April with temperatures that can dip below the freezing
mark, but very rare below -10 degrees.
It is also common
for Highways #12 and #99, as well as the road that travels to Gold
Bridge and Bralorne (known to locals as Highway #40 and/or
Lillooet-Pioneer Road #40), to experience avalanches or rockslides.
Due to this, these roads can be closed a time or two, during the
winter months. It is recommended for drivers to be careful when
driving these roads and to check on road conditions when leaving
Lillooet. These highways feature several kilometers of
hairpin/switchback turns and grades of up to 13% in some sections.
Lillooet's downtown
core is centered off of Highway #99. Located mostly along Main
Street, it has supermarkets, motels, department stores, gas stations
and a shopping center as well as the historic BC Rail Station used
for the Koaham Shuttle, a twice-daily passenger service that runs
from here to the small Seton Lake community of Seton Portage. It also
has a hospital and health center.
To the pedestrian,
Lillooet is pedestrian-friendly, it is a town that does not feature
any traffic lights that dictate its flow of traffic. Most of the
intersections of downtown either have a pedestrian-only crossing or a
painted crosswalk.
Highway #99 from
Lillooet to its junction with Highway #97 at Hat Creek Ranch was
originally a continuation of Highway #12 from Lytton. It received its
current Highway #99 recognition in 1992, when the Duffey Lake Road
between Mount Currie and Lillooet was paved. Highway #12 has existed
since 1953.
The Bridge that
travels along Highway #99 across the Fraser River in Lillooet has a
unique name and history. During the Cariboo Gold Rush in the 1860s,
23 bactrian camels were used as an enterprising idea to use them as
pack animals to transport freight supplies from Lillooet to
Alexandria, south of Quesnel. Sadly, the experiment quickly turned
into a massive failure when the camels' well-known and unpredictable
temperament and high-strung personality got the best of them.
The camels had a
habit of behaviors such as biting and eating laundry, kicking at
something or someone who came too close for comfort, and they were
known to frighten other animals with their strong and overpowering
odor. Also, the region's rough, rugged and rocky landscape made it
hard on the camel's soft feet, easily damaging them in the process.
As a result, some
were eventually abandoned and were free to roam in the wild, while
others were either kept as pets, hunted by hunters and wildlife for
food, or were killed via storms of the harsh Cariboo winter. The last
surviving camel to live in British Columbia died around 1905 in a
farm in Grande Prairie (known today as Westwold), located between
Kamloops and Vernon. The bridge is named the “Bridge of the 23
Camels” to commemorate this story.
The name originated
through a contest that was held to select a name for the new bridge
prior to its opening in 1980. The winning name was submitted by a
local resident of Lillooet. The bridge replaced an old wooden
suspension bridge that was built in 1913.
Before the Cariboo
Gold Rush in the 1860s, Lillooet was formerly known as Cayoosh Flat.
The town's current name comes from the Lil'Wat (Lillooet) First
Nations people, who live in a large area near where Lillooet sits as
well as areas near Anderson and Seton Lakes. Its name means “place
of wild onion” in First Nations language. Wild onions are a popular
culinary staple for these people.
The name Cayoosh
Flat was felt unfavorable with locals, so in 1860, the people of the
town petitioned British Columbia's Governor at the time, James
Douglas to change the name from Cayoosh Flats to Lillooet, in honor
of the First Nations people here.
The name Cayoosh is
a variant of cayuse, a word widely used to refer to a feral or
low-quality horse or pony.
Mile 0 cairn
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