The Old Yale Road is a historic early wagon road between New Westminster , British Columbia , Canada and Yale, British Columbia , and servicing the Fraser Valley of the British Columbia Lower Mainland in the late 19th century and into the early 20th. It eventually became an early highway route for automobiles through the valley and into the British Columbia interior beyond Yale. It would eventually be part of, then surpassed by, the Fraser Highway , the Trans-Canada Highway and the Highway 1 .
20-553: While the famed Cariboo Wagon Road from Yale north to the gold fields was completed in 1865, it was years before a Lower Mainland road was completed to Hope and Yale. To move men and supplies to the gold fields, service by river steamers was inaugurated in 1858. The navigable sections of the Fraser River proved the easiest and cheapest route of travel. As late as 1873, the Hudson's Bay Company foot trail ( "Fur Brigade Trail" )
40-641: A 50-mile-long trail through heavy forest with the help of a relative and a native local. Construction began in 1874 for a wagon road between New Westminster and Hope roughly paralleling the route of the Telegraph Trail of 1865. On maps it was called the New Westminster and Yale (Wagon) Road , but known locally as Yale Road . The route of Yale Road ran from New Westminster in a southeasterly direction through Langley Prairie and Aldergrove to Abbotsford. The road proceeded to curve south to follow
60-572: A path along the south shore of Sumas Lake and along the north base of the Vedder Mountains through Yarrow , Vedder Crossing, north to Sardis and Chilliwack. From Chilliwack, the road followed Reece's old trail through Rosedale and Bridal Falls, then northeasterly along the south shore of the Fraser River through Cheam View and Laidlaw to Hope and Yale. Reports during 1876–77 by the road superintendent, George Landvoight, described how
80-772: The Cariboo Wagon Road , the Great North Road or the Queen's Highway ) was a project initiated in 1860 by the Governor of the Colony of British Columbia , James Douglas . It was built in response to the Cariboo Gold Rush to facilitate settlement of the area by miners. It involved a feat of engineering stretching from Fort Yale to Barkerville, B.C. through extremely hazardous canyon territory in
100-550: The Interior of British Columbia . Between the 1860s and the 1880s the Cariboo Road existed in three versions as a surveyed and constructed wagon-road route. The first established road was Cariboo Wagon Road surveyed in 1861 and built in 1862 followed the original Hudson's Bay Company 's Harrison Trail ( Port Douglas ) route from Lillooet to Clinton , 70 Mile House , 100 Mile House , Lac La Hache , 150 Mile House to
120-848: The Old Cariboo Road , when the Lakes Route from Port Douglas to Lillooet had not yet been superseded by the Fraser Canyon route of the Cariboo Wagon Road proper. The mile-house names (e.g. 100 Mile House ), in the Cariboo are derived from measurements taken from the Mile '0' of this road, which is in the bend in the Main Street of Lillooet and commemorated there by a cairn erected in the 1958 Centennial Year. It
140-643: The “401” Freeway (constructed 1960–64). Until recently, the Fraser Highway (to Abbotsford) and Chilliwack-Rosedale (Yale Road East) sections were designated as B.C. Highway 1A . In 2005, the City of Chilliwack designated the Yale Road East section as the “Trans-Canada Parallel Route” . Sections of Yale Road and Old Yale Road continue to exist in the Fraser Valley as local roads. Some of
160-637: The 1930s along with renaming as the Fraser Highway (designated as "Highway 'A'" on road maps). As the Trans-Canada Highway (designated Highway 1 in 1941), the old Yale Road route saw further abandonment as the main highway of the valley with the by-passing of the Chilliwack-Rosedale-Bridal Falls section (constructed circa-1958-60) and the Fraser Highway section between New Westminster and Abbotsford by
180-544: The contract end around Soda Creek and Alexandria at the doorstep of the Cariboo Gold Fields. The second Cariboo Wagon Road (or Yale Cariboo Road) operated during the period of the fast stage-coaches and freight-wagon companies headquartered in Yale : 1865 to 1885. From the water landing at Yale , the road ran north via the spectacular Fraser Canyon route over Hell's Gate and Jackass Mountain , connecting to
200-599: The earlier Cariboo Road at Clinton. The third Cariboo Road was the revised route following the completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885. The railway station at Ashcroft became the southern end of the wagon road. Much of the Fraser Canyon wagon road was destroyed by the railway construction as well as by washouts and by the Great Flood of 1894 (interest in rebuilding this portion of
220-592: The old road beds are now on private property. The road maintains much of its historic characteristics – winding sections, narrow pavement, avoidance of steep terrain, and usage as a route for local above ground telephone and electricity services. A section in Langley, (South of the Langley Municipal Airport) remains constructed of concrete panels dating from 1923. Notes References Cariboo Wagon Road The Cariboo Road (also called
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#1732779586236240-527: The road 25 miles (40 km) west of Hope was impassable for months on end due to damage from river flood washouts. He also described other damage such as a destroyed bridge, caused by wild cattle driven over it. It was not until 1891 that the section of the Old Yale Road from Chilliwack to Hope could be considered in any sense permanent. During the automobile era after the First World War,
260-406: The road across the continental divide into Rupert's Land (modern day Alberta ) but this plan was abandoned when Douglas retired in 1864. The name Cariboo Road or Cariboo Trail is also informally applied to a toll road built by contractor Gustavus Blin-Wright in 1861–1862 from Lillooet to Williams Lake , Van Winkle and on to Williams Creek (Richfield, Barkerville). This route was known also as
280-481: The road cost nearly one and a quarter million dollars, and left a standing debt of £112,780 after its completion, one of many infrastructure costs in servicing the Gold Colony that forced its amalgamation first with Vancouver Island (1866), and then with Canada (1871 confederation). The Cariboo Road saw the transportation of over six and a half million dollars' worth of gold. Originally Douglas wanted to stretch
300-434: The road saw improvements and new alignments to efficiently move cars and trucks through the Fraser Valley. After Sumas Lake was reclaimed and converted to farmland in 1925, the highway was re-routed off the old Yale Road route in a more direct alignment through the eastern Fraser Valley between Abbotsford and Chilliwack. Though unpaved, the road was deemed passable by automobile in the mid-1920s; Realignments and pavement came in
320-527: The road would not occur until the construction plans for the Fraser Canyon Highway for automobiles in the 1920s). The road was a reaction to the high concentration of gold in the Cariboo region and the dangerous "mule trail", which was a rough-hewn cliff-side trail - wide enough only for one mule - that ran along the approximate route of the Cariboo Road. In order to lower supply-costs to
340-479: The settlers in the Cariboo region, Douglas ordered the construction of a more viable and safe form of transportation to the gold-mining settlements. The colonial government employed locals as well as the Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment ("sappers") who undertook amazing engineering feats, including the construction of toll bridges including the (original) Alexandra Suspension Bridge of 1863. Building
360-510: The steep climb over Pavilion Mountain to Clinton , where it merged with the newer Cariboo Road via Yale and Ashcroft (once the latter route was completed, that is). The River Trail continued along the Fraser Canyon as far as Big Bar and various routes spread towards Quesnel and Barkerville from there. The Cariboo Road was featured on the television historical series Gold Trails and Ghost Towns , season 2, episode 4. Yale, British Columbia Too Many Requests If you report this error to
380-406: Was along this route that an attempt was made to use Bactrian camels purchased from the U.S. Camel Corps for freight (1862), and also a tractor-style Thomson Road Steamer known as a "road train", one of the earliest motorized vehicles. Most foot traffic from Lillooet to the Cariboo however, went by the " River Trail ", far below the wagon road, which departed the Fraser Canyon at Pavilion for
400-459: Was the only land route between Fort Langley and Chilliwack . The section between Chilliwack and Yale dates back to 1862 as a rough trail, built over a primitive footpath. Credit for the trail has gone to Yale butcher Jonathan Reece who wanted to source his meat from a location closer than Oregon. After convincing some other men to invest in land for farming in Chilliwack, he proceeded to cut
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