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35-619: The Seton Lake First Nation's offices are located at Shalalth, British Columbia , where a School District #74 public school is in operation, teaching St'at'imcets language and St'at'imc culture in addition to regular curriculum. Chief: Ida Mary Peter Council Members: William Alexander, Randy James, Clifford Casper, Phyllis Peters, and Tim Peter There is no treaty with the Federal Government of Canada for this First Nations Band. The same can be said of many First Nations across British Columbia Seton Lake Band (in partnership with

70-513: A mountainside to the separate drainage basin of Seton Lake , utilizing a system of three dams, four powerhouses and a canal. The powerhouses have a maximum generating capacity of 480 MW and an average annual production of 2670 GWh. Development of the system began in 1927 and was completed in 1960. The waters initially pass through the Lajoie Dam and powerhouse and are then diverted through tunnels and penstocks from Carpenter Reservoir to

105-500: A new boom in mining created a surge in traffic. For the next two decades, Shalalth was the main transportation hub in the vicinity, with nearly 24-hour heavy traffic over the pass. Accommodation included Seton House and Shalalth Lodge. Adjacent to the managers' houses and the semicircle of employee barracks, a large hotel was built above the hydro townsite train station. Hotel guests comprised not only project-related visitors but also mine visitors. The hotel burned down around 1949. During

140-599: Is Lajoie Dam , which forms Downton Lake . Its confluence with the Fraser occurs at a double gorge formed by the two rivers, which are forced through narrow banks at this point and so reminiscent of a fountain (in another version of the name, the surname of one of Fraser's men was supposedly du Font , giving the location its name of the Lower Fountains (the Upper Fountains being another few miles upstream on

175-709: Is in that area the south flank of the Bridge, what Bridge River water enters the Fraser now is largely the flow of one of the Bridge's tributaries, the Yalakom River . The Yalakom, whose name means 'the ewe of the mountain sheep ' in the Chilcotin language , was in old times known as the North Fork of the Bridge. The South Fork of the Bridge River is many miles upstream, at the community of Gold Bridge , and

210-551: Is today known as the Hurley River (originally Hamilton's River). Several other large feeder streams contribute to the diverted flow of the Bridge, including Gun Creek , Tyaughton Creek , Marshall Creek, and Cadwallader Creek; the last-named is a tributary of the Hurley, about 15 kilometres upstream from its confluence with the Bridge. Bridge River Power Project harnesses the power of the Bridge River, by diverting it through

245-713: The Coast Mountains . Until 1961, it was a major tributary of the Fraser River , entering that stream about six miles upstream from the town of Lillooet ; its flow, however, was near-completely diverted into Seton Lake with the completion of the Bridge River Power Project , with the water now entering the Fraser just south of Lillooet as a result. The Bridge River hydroelectric complex , operated by BC Hydro , consists of three successive dams, providing water for four hydro power plants with

280-724: The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush , the Seton lake ferries on the Douglas Road bypassed Shalalth. From the 1880s, equipment for the Bridge River Country mines was barged in by lake for offloading at Shalalth. Five decades later, Ernie Marshall ran a Lillooet–Shalalth ferry until 1934 when the rail shuttle started. Water taxi service is available on Seton Lake, but has no formal schedule or licensed service. The long gone Oblate mission at Shalalth, which

315-693: The lake, meaning Seton Lake. Indigenous peoples form the majority of the population in the valley and in the Shalalth environs, which is one of the main communities of the Seton Lake First Nation Band of the St'at'imc (Lillooet) Nation. A First Nations school, small timber mill, and various small businesses operate. In 1990s, the Seton Lake First Nation built a new residential subdivision named Ohin, further east than

350-555: The 1950s, the population of the townsite and the Seton Portage area mushroomed into the thousands and boosted the school enrolments into the hundreds. Other hydro townsites were located at Terzaghi Dam , Lajoie, and below the Lajoie Dam site 56 kilometres (35 mi) upriver. The activity also caused a building boom in Lillooet. South Shalalth is the location of the two main powerhouses. Nearly all infrastructure costs for

385-540: The 4.0-kilometre (2.5 mi) tunnel in 1927, with an expected completion date of 1930. Construction halted in 1929 with the onset of the Great Depression and the collapse of financial backing for the project. The townsite remained largely empty during the 1930s, although steady traffic to the mines kept the hotels busy. On the opening of the Bralorne Mine in 1934, the roadway from the train station

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420-501: The Bridge River. Upstream from Moha the now-dry riverbed runs through the immense gorge of the Bridge River Canyon, which lies immediately downstream from Terzaghi Dam , the principal dam of the Bridge River Power Project . Terzaghi Dam forms Carpenter Lake , the longest and largest of the power project's reservoirs at about 40 kilometres. Just upstream from Gold Bridge , which is at the upper end of Carpenter Lake,

455-667: The Fraser River just south of Lillooet as a result. The salmon fishery of the Bridge River was near-entirely destroyed by this diversion. It is along Cadwallader Creek that the major mines of the Bridge River goldfields are located at Bralorne and Pioneer Mine . Other mining towns and camps built around mines in the Bridge River goldfields were Minto City , Wayside, Congress, Lajoie, Haylmore and Brexton (aka Fish Lake). Around Bralorne other localities such as Ogden grew up along road right-of-ways and slips of land between

490-479: The Fraser, today's community of Fountain The river came to be called the Bridge River due to the location of a bridge across the Fraser at this point, originally a pole-structure built by the native St'at'imc people but replaced at the time of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush in 1858 by a white-run tollbridge. Because of the diversion of the river to Seton Lake by Terzaghi Dam and tunnels through Mission Mountain , which

525-597: The Gold Trail School District) runs Ski'l Mountain Community School on Ski'l Mountain, Shalalth, BC. It runs a preschool program up to Grade 12, teaching local culture and language as well as the BC provincially mandated curriculum. The Rose Casper Healing Centre services the local band and community membership in areas of Social Development and Health Care. It runs several programs year round in

560-567: The administration of the Seton Lake First Nation are: One Indian Reserve is no longer under band title: In addition to this parcel of land, which was transferred out of Indian Reserve as part of the Bridge River Power Project , the powerhouses and townsites associated with the project are on IR No. 1A, and there are various recreational and residential leases at Shalalth , which formerly also had lodgings, shipping companies and other services. Shalalth, British Columbia Shalalth and South Shalalth are unincorporated communities on

595-945: The area has changed since it was first proposed for a park in the 1930s, due to the efforts of the prospecting and mining community in the goldfield towns. The protectionist vs. resource extraction battle over that area has raged since that time, and names used in debates for the area have included the Charlie Cunningham Wilderness, the Spruce Lake-Eldorado Study Area , the Spruce Lake-Eldorado Management Planning Unit (SLRMP), Southern Chilcotin Mountains Provincial Park, and South Chilcotin Provincial Park. In 2007

630-423: The areas of Social Development and Community Health Care. Seton Lake Band owns and operates a gas bar offering basic vehicle maintenance services. Seton Lake Band owns and operates a shuttle passenger train which makes return trips to Shalalth's closest town, Lillooet, BC where on reserve and community members can access medical services, grocery stores, and banks. Download coordinates as: Indian Reserves under

665-769: The banks of the river for the thirty kilometres between the community of Moha, at the confluence of the Yalakom and the Bridge. Gun Creek and Tyaughton Creek jointly drain the south flank of the protected wilderness area known as the Spruce Lake Protected Area , popularly known as the South Chilcotin although the area is not actually in the Chilcotin, which lies north of it, but in the Chilcotin Ranges . The official designation for

700-674: The development of the Mission Mountain Road and the Bridge River Road were born by local citizens, as was the "New Road" through the canyon from Terzaghi Dam to Moha . A medical crisis in Bralorne, the most important of the Bridge River gold towns, at the far upper end of that valley, prompted community efforts to build a road via the Bridge River Canyon directly to Lillooet . The completion of

735-647: The hydro project in 1962 reduced the importance of the Mission Mountain Road and Shalalth in turn. Shalalth remains without easy road access, the only two routes in and out of the valley being extremely difficult mountain roads – the Mission Mountain Road, and a BC Hydro road along Anderson Lake known as the High-Line Road. This leads to D'Arcy ( N'quatqua ) at the far end of that lake, which connects by regular road to Highway 99 at Mount Currie , and from there to Pemberton , Whistler , Squamish and Vancouver . The railway discourages locals from walking

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770-530: The mineral claims which dominate the northwestern flank of the Bendor Range in this area, providing services not approved of by company towns, including "sporting houses" , some of which were also in Gold Bridge until forced to move to Minto as Gold Bridge became larger. Other gold-mining activity is found throughout the river's basin. During the 19th Century, large hydraulic mining operations lined

805-521: The mines were rafted upstream in summer or hauled over the ice in winter. An example at this time was a stamp mill , which was sledded up from the Mission once snow fell. Around 1912, this trail evolved into the rudimentary Mission Mountain Road. Eight-horse teams hauled freight up the steep, switchback route. It could take seven days to reach the Bridge River. The first scheduled passenger transportation

840-512: The new access point to the Bridge River Country goldfields. In 1912, Geoffrey Downton, a land surveyor, stood on the 1,500-metre (5,000 ft) crest of Mission Mountain. He recognized the hydropower potential of the significant difference in elevation between the Bridge River and Seton Lake , which are only narrowly separated by Mission Ridge. A "model village" was erected at Bridge River (South Shalalth) and work began on

875-572: The northern shore near the western end of Seton Lake in the Squamish-Lillooet region of southwestern British Columbia . The localities are by road about 63 kilometres (39 mi) northwest of Lillooet , but only 24 kilometres (15 mi) by rail. The word Shalalth (pronounced Sha-LATH and spelled Tsal’álh in St'at'imcets, the Lillooet language ) means simply "lake" or, particularly,

910-483: The semi-abandoned village built for the hydro project at South Shalalth was one of four relocation centres in the Lillooet area for Japanese-Canadians from the coast. One of the relocatees at Shalalth was Dr. Masajiro Miyazaki , a US-trained osteopathic physician who remained after the war and became one of Lillooet's two Companions of the Order of Canada . After the war, the Bridge River Power Project resumption and

945-572: The total rated power of total 492 megawatts. Its name in the Lillooet language is Xwisten (pronounced Hwist'n), sometimes spelled Nxwisten or Nxo-isten). Dubbed Riviere du Font by Simon Fraser's exploring party in 1808, it was for a while known by the English version of that name, Fountain River , and some old maps show it as Shaw's River, after the name of one of Fraser's men. The Bridge River Ocean , an ancient ocean, takes its name from

980-444: The track to Lillooet. Remnants of the old Lillooet Trail catwalks on the cliffs above the rail line are unsafe. Mountain goats and sheep remain common on the slopes above Shalalth, and especially along the bluffs around Retaskit and at Seton Beach, at the Lillooet end of the lake. Bridge River The Bridge River is an approximately 120 kilometres (75 mi) long river in southern British Columbia . It flows south-east from

1015-431: The traditional Shalalth rancherie area (beginning at the base of the Mission Mountain Road to a few coves east). The name Ohin, pronounced OO(kh)win meaning "frostbite", is a reminder of the bitter cold of the Seton valley in winter. The roads peters out east of Ohin. A private recreational property before the first point, and two isolated reserves on debris fans farther along, are only accessible by water or rail. During

1050-482: The two powerhouses on Seton Lake Reservoir. Due to the force of the rivers at the Bridge's original confluence into the Fraser, the area has been for millennia the most important inland salmon-fishing site on the Fraser. The flow of the Bridge River, however, was near-completely diverted into Seton Lake with the completion of the Bridge River Power Project in 1961, with the water now entering

1085-479: The western terminus moved to Seton Portage. On the BC Rail main line, Shalalth, which was a key station over the decades, had become a flag stop by the 2000s. It was 6.3 kilometres (3.9 mi) northeast of Seton and 10.3 kilometres (6.4 mi) northwest of Retaskit. In 2002, BC Rail withdrew all passenger services. The indigenous operated Kaoham Shuttle continues to serve Shalalth. During World War II ,

Seton Lake First Nation - Misplaced Pages Continue

1120-539: Was a packtrain in 1925, which also carried the mail. A 16-passenger bus was introduced in 1934. Significant mining ended in 1971. The northward advance of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE) rail head reached the head of Anderson Lake in December 1914 and the head of Seton Lake the following month. The Bridge River (South Shalalth) train station on the west side of the bay became

1155-483: Was built down the ridge to Shalalth station, and the western terminus was moved 1.4 kilometres (0.9 mi) eastward. Craig Lodge, built in 1915, but destroyed by fire about 1948, was an official intermediate stop prior to the hotel's demise. However, the shuttle would also stop at any of the hamlets on request. The train always remained overnight at Lillooet. In the early 1940s, the Sunday runs were eliminated. In 1958,

1190-561: Was one of the earliest in the BC Interior, became known as "the Mission", providing the names for the Mission pass , ridge, and road. A trail linked to Seton Portage , which was upgraded to a wagon road in the early 1910s. By the late 1890s, miners were demanding that the 23-kilometre (14 mi) packtrain route northward over the pass be widened to a wagon road. On reaching the Bridge River , equipment and heavy supplies bound for

1225-407: Was rehabilitated. PGE introduced a gas car service that September to handle increased mining traffic to/from Lillooet. Two Hall-Scott passenger cars were alternatively used to haul two flatcars, which carried vehicles and freight. Providing four round trips daily, trains loaded and unloaded on a spur at the Bridge River station. In 1936, the service reduced to two round trips. In 1938, a superior road

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