Trails, boats, and trains: getting around BC’s Interior

The Fur Brigade Trail and others

A familiar sight during the early to mid 1800’s was the Fur Brigade as it made its way through the Okanagan, “At the head rode the Factor or Chief Trader, usually dressed in a suit of broadcloth, a white shirt with a collar to the ears, and on his head a tall beaver hat. All of this finery designed to enhance his authority and impress the natives.”

The fur traders of the Pacific Fur Company, the North West Company and the Hudson’s Bay Company were in Western Canada to acquire the beaver pelts. The Fur Brigade trail travelled from northern BC to their ships at port in Astoria, Washington from 1811 to 1847.

The area around Summerland is unique with respect to the Fur Brigade Trail and Nicola Prairie and L'Arbre Seul were frequently mentioned in the journals of the earliest fur traders. According to historic maps from the 1850’s, the oldest and the only non-native settlement in the Okanagan Valley is “Priest” located by Garnett Lake. Priest was founded by the Jesuit priest John Nobili in the late summer of 1846 and the Jesuits remained at this site until 1848 when it was abandoned due to sickness and the advent of the California Gold Rush.

After the fur trade slowed down due to the fickle fashion industry (silk was now “in” and felt was “out”), the trail was rarely used. But the 1857 Fraser River and 1858 Cariboo Gold Rushes changed all that and miners trekked into northern BC. American cattlemen saw the opportunity to sell to the miners and drove cattle through the Valley to the goldfields. When the CPR was built, the cattlemen again used this route to get cattle to the railway workers and in the late 1800’s, as ranching became a bigger industry in the Valley, the Trail was used to move cattle to the railway in Vernon.

The only other trails in the area were those made by the First Nations people. By the mid-1800’s, there were still no wagon roads to speak of and teams of horses and wagons travelled along stretches of land that were free of trees, rocks, and steep hills, or they would use the existing trails. Stagecoaches and wagons were used for transporting people, supplies and mail.

Other major early routes included a trail from Hope to Princeton, part of the future Dewdney trail from Fort Hope to Rock Creek, after gold was discovered at Rock Creek, just east of the Okanagan Valley (1859). Later the Allison Trail between Princeton and Okanagan Lake was built to move cattle from their summer grazing pastures in Princeton to their winter grounds on Okanagan Lake.

Locally the main road north to Kelowna and south to Penticton ran along the lake and was not always in the best of conditions! Automobiles started showing up in the Okanagan in 1904 and car owners demanded better roads.

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