Harrison River
A view of Harrison Lake from somewhere near the mouth of the Harrison River. Note the sandy beach which gives way to high misty hills that descend straight into the lake.
So, we will continue our journey up the Harrison River, telling the stories of man who were attempting to access the rich gold fields on the upper Fraser River in 1858 (and sometimes later). If you need to refresh your memory, this post is part of the story of the Harrison-Lillooet trail which led many gold-miners by a second trail into the interior. This trail is mentioned in my book, The HBC Brigades: Culture, Conflict, and Perilous Journeys of the Fur Trade. The journey up the rough rivers along this route were easily as perilous as those the HBC men travelled, and perhaps they were more difficult: if you remember, in 1846 Alexander Caulfield Anderson first explored this route as a possible brigade trail and rejected it. Still, it might work for the men who were desperate to get to the gold fields, who did not have horses to carry their loads and did not want them. They travelled the trail on foot or by boat or canoe, and the tougher men made it all the way to the gold-fields by this long portage.
The first post in this so-far-short series is found here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/harrison-lillooet-trail/
In spring 1859, Royal Engineer Lieutenant Henry Spencer Palmer surveyed the Harrison-Lillooet route for the colonial government of British Columbia. We we now continue to follow his journal and journey into the interior, introducing to you the remainder of Harrison River not covered in the first post in this series. Palmer’s journal entries will be interspersed with the stories told by the American goldminers, published both in Victoria newspapers, and in California. Later on, Alexander Caulfield Anderson’s voice will join the others, but not until we are further up the river to come: the Lillooet. We must also remember that Anderson is coming down the Lillooet River (and the lakes and rivers beyond) to Fort Langley: Both Lieutenant Palmer and the American goldminers are making their way upriver to the banks of the Fraser River.
In May 1859, Lieutenant Palmer begins his report with the words, “As the existing route from Queensborough [New Westminster] to [Port] Douglas can be performed throughout by steamers at certain seasons of the year, I deem it unnecessary to describe it in detail, dwelling only on those points where engineering work will be necessary to establish it as a permanent route for river steamers at all times.” And it appears that the Harrison River (the short river that flows from Harrison Lake to the Fraser River) is one of those places along the route that will need some engineering help. He says:
About 3 miles, however, from the mouth [of the Harrison River] it is extremely shallow and rapid, and although a channel does exist, which will admit of bateaux drawing 1 foot or 18 inches of water being towed through at the lowest stages of the water, it is a great deal too tortuous, narrow, and shallow, to admit of the passage of steamers of the class at present running on the Fraser, except at high stages of the water.
To render this route permanent it will be necessary to form a channel through these shallows of a considerable width (say 40 feet), which shall maintain a depth of at least 3 feet at all times. At the time I made my reconnaissance the water was too high to admit of my forming any decisive opinion as to the works necessary for the above purpose; but from such information as I have been able to collect, in addition to what I observed myself, the portion that would have to be deepened is not more than a quarter of a mile in length.
In April and May, when he was on the Harrison, the river would have been in freshet and the waters high from the melting snow in the mountains. The Harrison River was considerably deeper than it would be in late summertime and over the winter. Palmer had a few suggestions for deepening the waters of the Harrison River, but said the method could only be determined when the water was lower. Still…
As the river at this part is from 500 to 600 yards wide, I am of opinion that the forcing of so large a body of water through a comparatively narrow aperature would have the effect of deepening the channel. From this point to the head of Harrison Lake, a distance by water of 40 miles, no obstruction whatever exists to the navigation. The lake, which is 34 miles in length, is bounded on either side by cliffs so rocky and precipitous in most places, as almost to preclude the possibility of constructing a road along its margin; and the formation of a channel through the shallows of the Harrison River will, in consequence, be necessary as a preliminary step to ensure constant communication with [Port] Douglas.
Port Douglas, mentioned above, is the name of the town or settlement that was now located at the north end of Harrison Lake, where the Lillooet River flowed into Harrison Lake. This is where all the gold-miners began their river and land journey into the Fraser River country. This is where the Harrison-Lillooet trail began.
So, this from the Gazette newspaper, published July 18, 1858, and titled “The Pioneer Steamboat Trip up Harrison River and Lake.” The story is told by a reporter that the newspaper sent on the journey, and his writing is descriptive and really enjoyable: he places the reader aboard the little steamer he travelled in. Once in the Harrison River [or the lake-like basin that had formed at the western end of Harrison River], the men aboard could, at first, detect no current:
The lake or basin gradually contracted into a river known as Harrison’s, as we progressed to the north east. Soon we were stemming a current which runs with some rapidity between huge cliffs of granite, backed by the same class of lofty ranges and peaks already described. Here the lead announced a depth of water averaging from six to fifteen feet. Our Indian pilot, “Shackles,” affirmed that we were in the channel, and the boat was cautiously headed through the center of the passageway, though from the abrupt descent of the cliffs into the water on either hand, the deepest water promised to be nearer the shores. Canoes would find no difficulty in passing the entrance of Harrison’s Lake at all seasons…
We had on board about eighty passengers with their mining implements and baggage. Most of these were hardy, determined looking men, just the ones to brave the difficulties of the far interior and get the gold out, if it exists… All other thoughts, however, seemed now absorbed in the contemplation of the grand scenery about them. The various remarks of the gazers were curious and instructive to an attentive listener. All agreed upon one thing: that nowhere — not even in California — not even in the boasted Yosemite Valley — had they ever seen its equal for wildness and colossal magnitude…
Onward we sped, breasting the tiny waves created by the current, leaving a straight wake of foam behind us in the green waters, and creating quite a little swell of our own by the motion of the stern wheel. The sensation of ploughing for the first time through waters which had stood for ages reflecting these untrodden wilds, was as novel as it was curious. Perhaps this sudden intrusion upon such solitudes is the presage or the commencement of a new and startling era in their history. A volume could be written descriptive of the strange, grand scenery along this route, the opalescent hues imparted to the clouds around the lofty peaks as the sunlight striking full upon the old gnarled rocks and darkening foliate; the curious fantastic figures constantly occurring by the by the change of position, and interest in the scenery, holding spell bound the most unimaginative mind, and with the thoughtful, awakening new and intersting reflections.
The bottom of the channel was evidently rock, as after half an hours use the sounding lead was battered visibly by contact with the granite bottom.
So, Harrison River. There’s more: Here’s an interesting journal written in 1862 by a man named Harry Guillod, and published in the British Columbia Historical Quarterly. I am not sure I know on which date it was published, but its number in BCA (in case you want to look it up) is NW 906 B862b, volume 19. Guillod’s description of Victoria at that time is quite good, but I will not include it here. We are beginning this story at New Westminster, and I think what he is describing is both the Harrison River, and the Fraser:
As we returned [from a bathe] a steamer came in and on enquiry we found she left again at 7 for [Port] Douglas, so we got some sausage and bread for dinner packed up in all haste, and went on board the “Governor Douglas,” a queer looking steamer, having the paddle wheels, minus boxes, in the stern. The passage up the river was beautiful, the banks being densely wooded down to the water’s edge on either side, while now and then a snow-capped mountain towered high over us. Just as it was getting dark we passed a burning forest, a tract of land being cleared, as we supposed, after which we rolled ourselves up in our blankets and went to sleep on the floor of the cabin. I was roused several times in the night by the noise made on board, for it being foggy, they had a job to find the way and kept sounding the whistle.
July 10. The last part of the river was very narrow, quite closed in with bushes which grew in the water; and we ran into the sides several times. Once a tree caught some boxes of bacon and turned them over on the deck, smashing one of the number. We had also to pass through a lot of drift wood, which was slow work, it having to be pushed out of the way with long poles. We spoke with another steamer and took on board three or four chaps who had come with us in the Shannon from Southampton, they were going to Yale to get work, having been disgusted with the accounts from Cariboo which they had heard at Douglas.
In the next paragraph, they arrived at Port Douglas. I presume the first paragraph is describing the Fraser, but that during the night they steamed into the Harrison River, and so the second paragraph tells of the events along that river. But here’s another journal, “The Journal of Sophronie Marchessault,” a Canadien man who travelled across the continent to California and was part of that goldrush, before coming north to British Territory to follow the Harrison Lillooet route into the Fraser River goldfields. I found this journal in a publication titled: Je Me Souviens: A Publication of the American-French Genealogical Society, Vol. XXI, No. 2, Autumn 1998. Here’s what Sophronie Marchessault has to say of the Harrison River:
Upon reaching Fort Anglais [Langley] we had to camp for three weeks, while waiting for the water to calm down. This made our rope pulling [tracking up the river] easier. Our intention was to go as far up the river as possible, because in the first mines there was already too many people. For this reason we took the route by Harrison and Lilonette [sic]. One day before arriving at the portage, the river was very narrow, and the water rushing against big rocks caused our canoe to tip over and we lost everything we had. Our two companions in the canoe (one to steer and the other to keep the nose of the canoe facing the river bank) both nearly drowned. [Obviously, they were still tracking their canoe upriver, with two men in the canoe and the rest at the end of the rope]. One of them was caught in an eddy. With the help of a good cable we hauled him ashore without any harm. The other was thrown on a sandbar by the current and we saved him also without injury, save the fright. Since we were quite a few in our group, those that had escaped the dangers offered us provisions at a dollar a pound, and with these we reached the mines….
So these few stories bring us up the Harrison River to Harrison Lake in the early years. We can just touch on Harrison Lake, which is quite beautiful (as you can see from the photo above). These words come from the journalist who is hitching a ride on the steamer, Governor Douglas:
After eight miles steaming through the Harrison River, which pursues a north westerly course, now expanding into miniature mountain-locked lakes, or rather harbours, and anon contracting into limits which still classed it as a river, we emerged into the large expanse of water known as Harrison’s Lake.
This body of water is nearly forty miles in length, and about eight in its greatest width, though in some places it contracts to about two and a half. It is fed by the Lillooet river discharging into it from the north west, and is drained, as already stated, by the Harrison River emptying into the Fraser….
When the next blogpost in this series is written, it will appear here: https://nancymargueriteanderson.com/whatever-i-call-it/
There may or may not be a blogpost next week: On September 21, I will be at the 1826 James McMillan Expedition Commemoration run by the Surrey Historical Society, held at the Historical Stewart Farmhouse at Elgin Historical Park, on the banks of the Nicomekl River in Crescent Beach. Check the time: I think it runs from noon to 4 pm. See you there!
Copyright, Nancy Marguerite Anderson, 2024. All rights reserved.