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fountaincanyon10.jpg The Fraser Canyon is a stretch of the Fraser River where it descends rapidly through narrow rock gorges in the Coast Mountains enroute from the Interior Plateau of British Columbia to the Fraser Valley. Colloquially, the term "Fraser Canyon" is often used to include the Thompson Canyon from Lytton to Ashcroft, as they form the same highway route which most people are familiar with.

Geology

The Canyon was formed during the Miocene period (23.7-5.3 million years ago) by the river cutting into the uplifting Interior Plateau. From the northern Cariboo to Fountain, the river follows the line of the huge Fraser Fault, which runs on a north-south axis and meets the Yalakom Fault a few miles downstream from Lillooet.

Geography

Extending 270 km north of Yale to the confluence of the Chilcotin River, its southern stretch is a major transportation corridor to the Interior from "the Coast", with the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railways and the Trans Canada Highway carved out of its rock faces and in spots hanging above the river or many of the canyon's side-crevasses by dozens of bridges and trestles. Prior to the double-tracking of those railways, and major upgrades to Highway 1 (the Trans Canada Highway), travel through "the Canyon" was even more hair-raising than it is now. During the frontier era it was a major obstacle between the Lower Mainland and the Interior Plateau and the slender trails along its rocky walls - many of them little better than notches cut into granite, with a few handholds - were compared to goat-tracks and worse.

North of Lytton, it is followed by BC Highway 12, then from Lillooet to Pavilion by BC Hwy 99 (the farther end of the Sea-to-Sky Highway, though not carrying that name in this area). The BCR line follows the same stretch of canyon from Lillooet to just beyond Pavilion. Between there and the mouth of the Chilcotin River there are only rough ranching roads and the terrain is a mix of canyon depths flanked by arid benchland and high plateau. Between Pavilion and Lillooet, the river's gorge is at its maximum depth, with the river throttled through a series of narrow gorges flanked by high cliffs, though still flanked above those cliffs by wide benchlands which stand on the foreshoulder of the mountain ranges flanking the gorge.

Hell's Gate

At Hell's Gate, near Boston Bar, the canyon walls rise about 1000 m above the rapids. Fish ladders along the river's side permit migrating salmon to bypass a rockslide that diverted the river during the blasting of the CNR line in 1913. The area around Hell's Gate carries the name Black Canyon, which may either be a reference to the colour of the rocks when they're in the rain, or the name of a community built on the cliffsides here during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. Today there is a specially-built air-tram, like the kind used in ski resorts, which takes tourists down to Hell's Gate, where visitors may view the fish ladders as well as the boiling rush of the Fraser's waters. A set of tourist pavilions with shops and cafe now occupies the site of the workmen's housing seen in the accompanying image.hellsgate21.jpg

At Siska, a few minutes south of Lytton, there is a spectacular double rail bridge, with the continental mainlines switching sides of the river at the throat of a rocky gorge.

Upper Fraser Canyon

Just north of Lillooet, narrow rock ledges choke the river just at the confluence of the lower canyon of the Bridge River, forming an obstacle to migrating fish that has made this spot the busiest aboriginal fishing site on the river, from ancient times to the present. Concentrations of First Nations people here, from all tribes of the Interior, were believed to have been in excess of 10,000.

Archaeology and History

At the mouth of the Canyon, an archeological site documents the presence of the lō people in the area from the early Holocene period, 8,000 to 10,000 years ago after the retreat of the Fraser Glacier. An archaeological dig farther upriver at Keatley Creek, near Pavilion, is dated to 8000 BP and dates from a time when a huge lake filled what is now the canyon above Lillooet, created by a slide a few miles south of the present-day town.

The history of the canyon is very rich, especially from Pavilion south to Yale. Geographer Cole Harris comments that the lower Canyon was home to the densest population on the continent up to the time of the Fraser Gold Rush, thanks to the fecundity of its fishery.

During the Gold Rush, 10,500 miners and an untold number of hangers-on populated its banks and towns during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858-60, during which it was the setting for the bloody but largely-unknown Fraser Canyon War and the opera buffa farce of a series of events known as McGowan's War. Details of these events can be found under their respective titles and other historical material in the pages on the towns named in this article. Other important histories connected with the Canyon include the building of the Cariboo Wagon Road and the construction of the CPR.

The river is navigable between Boston Bar and Lillooet and also between Big Bar Ferry and Prince George and beyond, although rapids at Soda Canyon and elsewhere were still difficult waters for the many steamboats which piloted its "foamy brine" in the 1800s and early 1900s. One vessel in particular is worthy of note, the MV Scuzzy, which was built with multiple-compartment hulls to preserve it from sinking due to rock damage. It was used to haul equipment and supplies during the construction of the CPR.

With the construction of the CPR in the 1880s came the destruction of key portions of the Cariboo Wagon Road, as there was no room for both railway and road on the narrow, steep mountainsides above the river. As a result, the towns of Lytton and Boston Bar were cut off from road access with the rest of the province, other than by the difficult wagon road to Lillooet via Fountain. During the automotive age and following the construction of the CNR, a newer version of the road was built through the Canyon. This was named the Cariboo Highway until the construction and designation of the Trans Canada Highway in the late 1950s-early 1960s.

Upper Canyons of the Fraser

There are other canyons on the Fraser that are not considered part of the Canyon, notably at Soda Creek, between Williams Lake and Prince George. The official but comparatively diminutive Grand Canyon of the Fraser is in the river's upper stretch through the Rocky Mountain Trench, between Prince George, but despite its name it has neither the roughness of water nor the depth and severity of canyon as is found in the area of Lillooet or between Boston Bar and Yale.

Almost all of the rivers and creeks feeding the Fraser from Williams Lake south have their own canyons which open onto the Fraser, or are just up side-valleys a few miles. These include Marble Canyon, Churn Creek, the Chilcotin River, the Bridge River, Seton Lake and Cayoosh Creek, the Stein River, the Nahatlatch River, the Coquihalla River and the innumerable smaller creeks flanking the river between Kanaka Bar and Yale.

Fraser Canyon Tunnels

The Fraser Canyon Highway Tunnels were constructed in the late 1950's to about the mid 1960's as part of the Trans Canada Highway project. There are seven tunnels in total, the shortest being about 57 meters, the longest is about 610 meters and is one of North America's longest. They are situated between the Town of Hope and the Town of Boston Bar.

In order from south to north, they are: Yale, Saddle Rock, Sailor Bar, Alexandra, Hell's Gate, Ferrabee and China Bar. The Hell's Gate tunnel is the only tunnel that does not have lights, while the China Bar tunnel is the only tunnel that requires ventilation.

A recent project at the Ferrabee Tunnel has been to install warning lights that are activated by cyclists before they enter the tunnel. This was required because the tunnel is curved. It is expected that the China Bar and Alexandra tunnels will get the same warning lights as they too are curved.

See also

Rivers

Towns and Localities

Other

Geography of British Columbia | Canyons and gorges of Canada | Fraser River

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Fraser Canyon".

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