Team Lipstick is heading south today after a wonderfull stay in Stewart and it has become quiet clear to both Andre and Willy that this whole stretch of western Canada was only inhabited and developed for one simple reason – GOLD and other mining activities.
So they drove further South and stayed in Quensel for the night in order to visit Barkerville the next DAY.
The Klondike Gold Rushwas a migration by an estimated 100,000 prospectors to the Klondike region of the Yukon in north-western Canada between 1896 and 1899. Gold was discovered there by local miners on August 1896, and, when news reached Seattle and San Francisco the following year, it triggered a stampede of prospectors.
To reach the gold fields, most took the route through the ports of Dyea and Skagway in Southeast Alaska. Here, the Klondikers could follow either the Chilkoot or the White Pass trails to the Yukon River and sail down to the Klondike. Each of them was required to bring a year’s supply of food by the Canadian authorities in order to prevent starvation. In all, their equipment weighed close to a ton, which for most had to be carried in stages by themselves. Together with mountainous terrain and cold climate, this meant that those who persisted did not arrive until summer 1898.
To accommodate the prospectors, boom towns sprang up along the routes and at their end Dawson City was founded at the confluence of the Klondike and the Yukon River. From a population of 500 in 1896, the town grew to house around 30,000 people by summer 1898
Many mines are also still operating around Stewart and the boys decided to visit another famous gold rush town today – Barkerville
By 1861 rumours about gold discoveries, along the Williams River in the interior of British territory along the Northern Pacific, had begun to leak out to many of the minors working the Fraser River and other area of the Pacific Northwest. One of the prospectors who migrated towards the area was Billy Barker. He had worked the California fields and the Fraser river and come up relatively empty handed. He travelled inland and on a small plot in Stouts Gulch on the Williams River, he sank a mining shaft straight down which was about 50 feet deep. He struck a rich vein and started the gold rush.
Between 1862 and 1870, thousands of people travelled the Cariboo Waggon Road to Barkerville. During this gold rush era, Barkerville was the largest city west of Chicago and north of San Francisco. Today, it’s one of the largest heritage sites in Western North America.
Walking through this town gave the boys a good understanding of how people lived during the gold rush days some 150 years ago and the efforts they put in in order to strike it rich.
Hairdressers and Dentists followed the diggers to gain from the gold rush.
After sucking in soo much old history and fully understanding now how this part of the world developed the guys headed further down South and after a pictourous drive through the mountains outside Vancouver and following the valley of the Fraser River
The Fraser is the longest river within British Columbia, Canada, rising at Fraser Pass near Blackrock Mountain in the Rocky Mountains and flowing for 1,375 kilometres into the Strait of Georgia at the city of Vancouver
The road was winding itself up and down through the mountains and eventually the boys arrived in Vancouver – where they thought to have booked a motel for the night.
On arrival, however and after asking the Google Map for the directions to the motel they realised that there is also a Vancouver in Washington State which is 494 km away and not in Canada but in the USA …
To make matters worse the whole of Vancouver Canada was booked out due to a long weekend ( Labour Day ) so the boys had to drive 35km out of town to find a place for the night….