Lillooet, British Columbia Totally Explained

Everything about Lillooet British Columbia totally explained

Lillooet (formerly Cayoosh Flat) is a small but historic and highly scenic community on the Fraser River in western Canada, about 240 kilometres (150 miles) up the British Columbia Railway line from Vancouver. Situated at an intersection of deep gorges in the lee of the Coast Mountains, it has an extremely arid climate - 400 mm of precipitation is recorded annually at the town's weather station, although nearby microclimates (some within a few hundred metres of the station) receive less than 50mm (2 inches) of precipitation over small patches of benchland flanking the river adjacent to town. Lillooet has a long growing season, and once had prolific market gardens and orchard produce. It often experiences extremely hot summers often breaking and it vies with nearby Lytton for the title of "Canada's Hot Spot."

Population

Current population of the town proper today is about 2,800, with another 4,500 in the surrounding region for which Lillooet serves as the commercial and social "downtown". The population includes three large bands of the St'at'imc or Lillooet Nation whose reserves abut the town on all sides, and another three large reserves within . Historical populations have included large numbers of Americans and Chinese, although there are few of either today (although many longtime local families, First Nations and non-First Nations, have some bloodlines from both). The town's non-native population has been historically multi-ethnic in extraction, with a relatively high-rate of intermarriage between all groups.

Economy

Its economy is based around logging, the railway, ranching, farming, and government services. The town has had several booms and busts, relying on forestry since the mid-1970s although previous booms were connected with Fraser Canyon and Cariboo Gold Rushes, the building of the Lillooet Cattle Trail, another gold rush adjacent to town in the 1880s and another nearby in the Pacific Great Eastern Railway, and spinoffs from the development of the Bridge River goldfields from the 1910s onwards. Lillooet's economy also boomed in the 1940s and 50s during the construction of the Bridge River Power Project, which includes a dam, canal and powerhouse on the outskirts of town.

History and culture

Lillooet is an important location in native history and culture and remains one of the main population centres of the St'at'imc (Lillooet Nation), and today it's one of the southernmost communities in North America where indigenous people form the majority. Just over 1/2 of the people in Lillooet and area are St'at'imc. Considered to be one of the oldest continuously-inhabited locations on the continent, the area is reckoned by archaeologists to have been inhabited for several thousand years. The immediate area of the town attracted large seasonal and permanent populations of native peoples because of the confluence of several main streams with the Fraser and also because of a rock-shelf just above the confluence of the Bridge River which is an obstacle to migrating salmon.
This rock shelf, known in gold rush times as the Lower Fountain, was reputedly made by the trickster Coyote, leaping back and forth across the river to create platforms for people to catch and dry fish on. This location, named Sat' or Setl in the native language, is the busiest fishing site on the Fraser above its mouth and there are numerous drying racks scattered around the banks of the river canyon around it.

Fraser Canyon Gold Rush

The town had its start as one of the main centres of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858-59, during which it was reckoned to be "the largest town west of Chicago and north of San Francisco", a title also held by certain other towns in British Columbia in rapid succession (Yale first, Barkerville after). Just after this gold rush, the town's layout as it's today was surveyed by the Royal Engineers and its Main Street tied into the original Cariboo Wagon Road or Old Cariboo Road to Fort Alexandria, a huge project undertaken as a toll road by Gustavus Blin Wright, one of the many entrepreneurial personalities of the early colony. Much of its tortuous canyon-brink road grade for twenty or thirty kilometres from "Mile 0" remained in use until the 1970s. The route via the lakes to Lillooet and up Blin Wright's wagon road to the Cariboo goldfields was outflanked within a few years by the now-better known Cariboo Wagon Road via a shorter and less portage-intensive route from Yale to Barkerville via Ashcroft a few years later. Lillooeters still, however, consider their town to be "Mile 0" of the original Cariboo Wagon Road, and it's true that the numbered roadhouse names of the Cariboo district are measured from the bend in Main Street, where a cairn was erected in 1858 to commemorate this fact. The first stretch of Main Street north from the cairn is said to point due north and at one time was called "the Golden Mile" partly because of all the gold dust reputed to be scattered along it in its heyday, and also because it was the hub of supply for the surrounding goldfields.
Lillooet was originally named Cayoosh Flat, a name that was felt to be unsavoury by the residents of the town at the time of its incorporation in 1860. Since it was at the end of the Lillooet Trail, aka the Douglas Road or Lakes Route, and the Lil'wat native people farther southwest along that route spoke the same language as the native bands near town, the governor was petitioned to change the name to Lillooet, with permission for use of the name granted by the chiefs of the Lower St'at'imc at Mount Currie (Lil'wat) and agreed to by the bands of what is now the Upper St'at'imc.

Other mining history

There have been a series of gold rushes in the surrounding region since the original one, including a large hard-rock one in the upper Bridge River basin which had its peak from the 1930s to the 1950s, focussed on two main mining towns at Bralorne and adjacent Pioneer Mine and that area's main base town of Gold Bridge. Gold mining and prospecting continues in the area to this day, as do prospects for copper, silver and nephrite jade, though not to the same extent. Until the discovery of even larger deposits of jade near Cassiar, the Lillooet area was the world's largest source of the nephrite form of jade. Unknown tonnes were exported to China before government assayers discovered the nature of the "black rocks" that the Chinese miners found so interesting.
In the 1950s, local farmer and teacher Ron Purvis adapted the skil-saw concept by implementing a diamond rotary blade. This enabled the carving of the many immense jade boulders which line the banks and bed of the Fraser and Bridge Rivers, which were on the one hand immovable and on the other would shatter or striate if blasting was used to break them. Purvis' innovation was revolutionary in the jade mining business and larger versions of his saw are at use in the Cassiar region. There are no major commercial jade mines in the Lillooet area today, although local shops still carry polished jade souvenirs.

Japanese Relocation Centres during World War II

There are a number of Japanese-Canadian families in Lillooet today who are descendants of those who remained in the area after their forced relocation to Lillooet and other nearby camps at Shalalth, Minto City and McGillivray Falls during World War II.

Education

Fountainview Academy is a small, private boarding academy with approximately 60 students enrolled in grades 9-12. It hosts students mainly from the United States of America and Canada, as well as countries like Japan, Korea, Denmark, and Germany. It is widely known among the locals, as well as the Adventist churches across the province and even across the border for its youth orchestra and choir. It serves duly as a high school and an organic carrot farm, its weed control method being the students themselves. The school offers a summer vocational program which allows students to learn different skills in a safe environment. Every other year Fountainview Academy goes on a mission trip over its spring break time, the two most recent being Guatemala and Panama. There the students learn what it's like to live in poorer conditions and how to be a more effective witnessing tool. They also participated in the disaster relief project after hurricane Katrina. Fountainview Academy is affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, although it isn't directly owned or managed by that organization. It is unofficially known as one of the Seventh-day Adventist self supporting institutions.www.fountainview.ca

Order of Canada winners

One of the relocated Japanese, Dr. Masajiro Miyazaki, an osteopath who was enlisted by local police during the war to serve as a replacement for the town's deceased coroner and who became the region's de facto general practitioner and "bush doctor", is one of the town's two Companion of the Order of Canada. Dr. Miyazaki's Lillooet residence, the Miyazaki House, is still open for tours of the doctor's office (which has been preserved as he left it).
Lillooet's other Order of Canada winner was Margaret Lally "Ma" Murray, a Kansas-born farmgirl who moved to Vancouver before World War I and wound up marrying her employer, publisher George Murray, of Canadian establishment stock. They moved to Lillooet in 1931 when George campaigned for the town's seat in the provincial legislature, and launched the once-famous Bridge River-Lillooet News (now the Lillooet News). The paper was known for Ma's saucy wit, daring opinions and spicy language and Ma became closely identified with the town. She was, perhaps, the source of the town's greatest renown.

Notable Lillooeters

(Including non-residents who are somehow connected with Lillooet's history, or who lived in town for a while at least)

A.C. Elliott, Magistrate in Lillooet and 4th Premier of British Columbia
Alexander E.B. Davie, member of the Legislative Assembly for Lillooet and 8th Premier of British Columbia
Caspar Phair, Lillooet pioneer, Gold Commissioner and first Government Agent
A.W.A. "Artie" Phair, Caspar's son; local photographer, archivist and successor to his father in the capacity of Government Agent
Chief Hunter Jack, Chief of the Lakes Lillooet (-1910), famed hunting guide and "Hyas Tyee" of the Bridge River Country
Bill Manson, famed hunting guide (Hunter Jack's apprentice) and father of Tom and Donald Manson, also well-known hunting guides, and son of Donald Manson, well-known in the early history of the Hudson's Bay Company in BC.
Ernest Carson, MLA for Lillooet (and Lillooet West) and provincial Minister of Works
Captain John Martley - pioneer at Pavilion, ex-British Army officer
James Scotchman - Grand Chief Jimmy Scotchman of the St'at'imc
Arthur Noel - with his wife Delina, co-discoverer of the Bralorne Mine
George Murray MLA and publisher of the Bridge River-Lillooet News
"Ma" Murray - George Murray's wife and editor of the News; Order of Canada recipient
Dr. Masajiro Miyazaki, osteopath, coroner and general practitioner; *Order of Canada recipient
Vernon Pick - uranium prospector and zillionaire, builder of Walden North bunker-estate on Cayoosh Creek
Ross Rebagliati - 1998 Olympic gold medalist in snowboarding, a resident of Whistler. Ross never lived in Lillooet but he's of the pioneer Rebagliati family still present in town.
Carl Chaplin - Carl was the community's official "artist-in-residence" during the 1980s and resided in Miyazaki House

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