Talk:Cariboo Road

Historical addenda

Not directly related to the road, but worth commenting on here:

Originally Douglas wanted to stretch the Road to Edmonton, an early vision of the Trans-Canada Highway, but this plan was abandoned when Douglas retired.

Douglas' intention in this was for BC to be able to claim part of the Northwest Territory, i.e. what is now Alberta, more or less, to an expanded Colony of British Columbia.Skookum1 22:05, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Notes on route map

I've shown the route in its original form, with the water section from Alexandria to Quesnellemouthe - which I just noticed I left the first 'e' out of and will have to rebuild the whole map later, layering being what it is and that was one of the first names I placed on the map (grrr). The southern dotted line to Rock Creek and Wild Horse Creek is the Dewdney Trail (more or less; I'll have to re-inspect the route later) and the one west of Yale is the Douglas Road and from Lillooet to Clinton is Blin-Wright's road, which the Cariboo Road followed the older route for from Clinton to Alexandria; the dotted line north of Lillooet up the Fraser is the "river trail", which continued to the Omineca; a branch of it ran northeast from Big Bar Ferry as shown, towards the cutoff for Quesnel Forks. The dotted line approaching Barkerville from the south is the route via "The Forks" - Quesnel Forks, not to be confused with Quesnel, which in those days was known as Quesnellemouthe. I've also shown the water route via Kamloops Lake, the Thompson River and the Shuswap Lakes to the Big Bend, with that last little bit of red being the pass between the Seymour River and the goldfields; I didn't make a town marker there because I'm not sure where it would be. Okanagan Trail and Whatcom Trail also left off the map; partly because by the time the Cariboo Road was built they were more or less out-of-use, at least as far as their political/wartime heyday was involved. Old Yale Road to be added when I know its date (formerly the Grand Trunk, I think; later replaced by the Pacific Highway 1A).Skookum1 01:06, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Wording of "Old Cariboo Road" section

The name Cariboo Road or Cariboo Trail is also informally applied to a toll-road built by contractor Gustavus Blin-Wright from Lillooet to Alexandria, known also as the Old Cariboo Road, when the Lakes Route from Port Douglas to Lillooet had not yet been superseded by the Fraser Canyon route of the Cariboo Wagon Road proper.

This caught my eye, as there's an obscure usage issue - quite uncitable I fear - that the term Lillooet Trail did not apply to the Old Cariboo Road directly but rather only to the Douglas Road. But if someone said "he took the Lillooet Trail" meaning he came up via the Lakes Route/Douglas Road aka Lillooet Trail then necessarily he also took the Old Cariboo Road....well I guess not as there are stories of people coming through only to head down-canyon not to the Cariboo....hmmm; anyway it's pretty obscure/subtle but it was worth me noting it for myself here if y'all don't mind. Lillooet Trail also has other meanings; and it may well turn up in sources as the Old Cariboo Road being spoken of as "the route via Lillooet and the Lakes"; what I'm saying is if one took the one route one was most likely to also take the other one; unless you were locally settled/living. Lillooet Trail may already be a disambig because of its North Van-Pemberton meaning(s).....this is less relevant to this page than to the Old Cariboo Wagon Road page proper; in reading the Cariboo sources such as Wade's or Skelton's books/compendia the vagueness of references ot the lower canyon is kind of glaring; as if Lillooet were unspoken of; really odd given Lillooet's dependence on and relationship with the Cariboo right from the start and since; might be bad blood left over from the routing argumkents for the Cariboo Road and CPR (which thought about going through there). But often even in Wade's book, in which the theme is the road itself and the "linear community" it spawned there's a lot of geographic assumptions that make it hard to sort out sometime. One day someone will publish a cogent map of early BC trails and explorations; figuring out routes from what the sources say is often guesswork if you've only got the one source/document; you generally need a few kind of like triangulating different descriptions....still piecing together the Kamloops-Green Lake Brigade Trail and the River Trail (British Columbia) despite the obviousness of their overall routes..?Skookum1 (talk) 01:52, 20 March 2008 (UTC)