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The New Eldorado: "A Complete View of the Newly Discovered Goldfields"

The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, aka the Fraser Gold Rush, occurred in 1858 after gold was discovered on the Thompson River at its confluence with the Nicoamen River, a few miles upstream from the Thompson's confluence with the Fraser at present-day Lytton. News of the strike, already being mined for a few years but not publicized, was spread to San Francisco when the Governor of the Colony of Vancouver Island, James Douglas, sent a shipment of ore to that city's mint.

San Francisco and the California gold fields met the news with excitement, and within a month 30,000 men had descended upon Victoria, which until that time had had only a population of about 500. This was a record for mass movement of mining populations on the North American frontier, even though more men in total were involved in the California and Klondike Gold Rushes. By the fall, however, tens of thousands of men who had failed to stake claims, or were unable to because of the summer's high water on the river, pronounced the Fraser to be "humbug" and many returned to San Francisco. A continuing influx of newcomers replaced the disenchanted, with even more men storming the route of the Douglas Road to the upper part of the Canyon around Lillooet others got to the upper Canyon via the Okanagan Trail, and to the lower Canyon via the Whatcom Trail. Both these routes were technically illegal, due to the Governor's requirement that entrance to the Colony be made via Victoria, but thousands came overland anyway. Accurate numbers, especially on the upper Fraser, are therefore difficult to reckon.

During the gold rush, tens of thousands of largely American prospectors filtered into the newly-declared Colony of British Columbia and disrupted the established balance between the HBC's fur traders and Aboriginal peoples. The influx of prospectors included large numbers of Chinese as well as Britons, English Canadians and Maritimers, French Canadians, Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, Belgians and other Europeans, Hawaiians, Mexicans, West Indians and others. Many of those of European origin were Californian by culture, and this included Maritimers such as Amor De Cosmos and others, so the numbers of "Americans" associated with the gold rush must be understood to be inherently ethnic to start with. Alfred Waddington, an entrepreneur and pamphleteer of the gold rush later infamous for the disastrous road-building expedition which led to the Chilcotin War of 1864, estimated there were 10,500 miners on the Fraser at the peak of the gold rush, but this is based on estimates from the Yale area and does not include the non-mining "hangers-on" population.

The Fraser Gold Rush was a seminal point in the history of British Columbia in that it led to the declaration of the Crown Colony of British Columbia, aka the Mainland Colony, in order to assert British authority and governance over the territory, which had been unincorporated in the wake of the Oregon Treaty of 1846. Douglas placed restrictions on immigration to the new British colony, including the proviso that entry to the territory must be made via Victoria and not overland, but thousands of men still arrived via the Okanagan and Whatcom Trails. Douglas also sought to limit the importation of weapons, one of the reason for the Victoria-disembarkation requirement, but the lack of resources meant that overland routes to the goldfields could not be controlled.

During the fall of 1858 tensions increased between miners and the Nlaka'pamux, the First Nations people living in the heat of the canyon, which led to the Fraser Canyon War. The upshot of the war was that miners were wary of venturing upriver beyond Yale and began to use the Lakes Route to Lillooet instead, prompting Governor Douglas to contract the building of the Douglas Road, which was the mainland colony's first public works project. The aftermath of the war also saw the Governor arrive in Yale to accept the apologies of the Americans who had waged war on the natives and also to make the British military and governmental presence more visible, appointing justices of the peace and also revising the slapdash mining rules which had emerged along the river. Actual troops to maintain order, however, were still in short supply.

Interracial tensions between Americans and non-white miners erupted on Christmas Eve, 1858, with the beating of Isaac Dixon, a freed American black who was the town barber and in later years was a popular journalist. Dixon was beaten by two men from Hill's Bar, which was the other main town of the southern part of the goldfields. The complicated series of events that ensued is known as McGowan's War, which had the potential to provoke American annexationist leanings within the goldfields, prompted the Governor to send newly-appointed Chief Justice Begbie, the colony's Chief of Police Chartres Brew and a contingent of Royal Engineers and another of Royal Marines to intervene. Actual force was not used and the matter was resolved peacefully, and the corruption of British appointees in the area, which had contributed to the crisis, was dealt with.

The Fraser Canyon War did not affect the upper reaches of the goldfields, in the area of Lillooet and the short-lived popularity of the Douglas Road saw that town designated "the largest town north of San Francisco and west of Chicago", with an estimated population of 16,000. This title was also briefly held by Port Douglas, Yale, and later on by Barkerville.

By 1860, however, the gold-bearing sandbars of the Fraser were depleted and many of the miners had either drifted back to the US or dispersed further into the British Columbia wilderness in search of unstaked riches. This diaspora from the Fraser resulted in other gold rushes at Rock Creek, Wild Horse Creek and the Big Bend of the Columbia River; the Fort Colville Gold Rush in Washington Territory was also a spin-off of the Fraser gold rush. Northward exploration up the basin of Fraser led to the discovery of gold in 1860 at Williams Creek in the Cariboo district east of Quesnel, which turned into the Cariboo Gold Rush, and also in the Omineca Region in northwest-central British Columbia. Continued prospecting the Lillooet area led to ongoing gold mining activity and minor rushes in the surrounding region, including the Bridge River Goldfields, and the Cayoosh Gold Rush.

• McGowan's War, Donald J. Hauka, New Star Books, Vancouver (2000) ISBN
• British Columbia Chronicle,: Gold & colonists, Helen and G.P.V. Akrigg, Discovery Press, Vancouver (1977) ISBN
• Claiming the Land, Dan Marshall, UBC Ph.D Thesis, 2002 (unpubl.)
• Historical Atlas of British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, Derek Hayes, Cavendish Books, Vancouver (1999) ISBN

• Simon Fraser (explorer)
• Fraser Canyon War
• McGowan's War
• Cariboo Gold Rush
• Whatcom Trail
• Okanagan Trail
• Douglas Road
• Cariboo Road
• Old Cariboo Road
• River Trail
• History of the west coast of North America