BC Archives # E-00174
Lillooet Sights & Stories

The pictures on this page are not pictures or modern Lillooet, but distinctive images from its long history since the gold rush heyday that gave it birth - or rather, transformed it from its age-old role as a home of the St'at'imc people; the strip of the Golden Mile occupies the site of an ancient dwelling-place known as Sxetl (Scet'), and was long a complaint of the St'at'imc in their appeals to the Crown concerning their rights and history in the area. The image above is sometime early in the 20th Century - the railway cut is visible at the centre-right of the picture, intersecting at upper right with the empty stretch of Main Street that runs vertically at right; this could well be pre-Great War, as there does not seem to be any track laid, although there seems to be something of a works yard in the vicinity of today's station and other railway buildings. The Golden Mile as it is shown here is said not to have changed much since the 1860s until this point, and remained pretty much the same until after World War II, when residential development overtook the empty benchlands above and below town, as well as to the right of the here-empty stretch of Main Street that lies to the right of the Golden Mile. [on the other hand, the railway cut as shown leads towards a later rail bridge than the one that lay downstream from the junction of Cayoosh Creek with the Fraser, which is at the picture's centre]

The Hanging Tree

The Douglas Trail Gold Rush Lillooet The July The Golden Mile Chinatown Gold & Jade The Old Bridge
Seton Beach Ranches Horses The Fishing Grounds Artie Phair Ma Murray The Rancherie Churches Oddities

Scenery:

Nkoomptch

Log Cabin Theatre

The Ice Caves & the Mysteries of Fountain Ridge

Hop Farm & Cariboo Breweries

Tobacco Farming

BC Archives # A-03547	Tobacco farming was one of Lillooet's many "lost industries" - locally-based industries from an age in which the town had a diverse economy - which included a brewery and the commercially-producing Fountain Ridge ice caves. The tobacco farms were such a success the town for many years had its own homegrown brands of cigarettes and cigars which were marketed throughout Western Canada. If I recall correctly, the Russell family were one of those involved in the industry, although legend has it that the first tobacco in Lillooet was planted in the gold rush by the many Mexican packers then active in town. The tobacco fields and drying sheds pictured above were adjacent to Cayoosh Creek in the area of today's Cayoosh Creek bridge; the benchland at upper centre is the location of Murrayville and the back end of the British Columbia Railway railyards.
Grave of Jonathan Scott, Tobacco Farmer
BC Archives # I-29069

Chinese Rock Piles

Ginseng

The Mile 'O' Cairn

BC Archives # I-22310

The Mile 'O' Cairn stands at the apex of the bend in Lillooet's Main Street, adjacent to the survey marker that marked Mile 'O' of the Cariboo Wagon Road that led from Lillooet to Barkerville. Due north from this point, Lillooet's Main Street ran wide enough to turn a draw of oxen in - the famous "Golden Mile" - along which stood hostelries, saloons, stores, restaurants, and the innumerable other services that were necessary along the staging ground of a frontier wagon road. From this marker were measured all the mile-points of the wagon road, including the names of such towns as 70 Mile House and 100 Mile House (although the popular misconception is that these were measured from Yale on the Fraser Canyon route). The cairn was built of local ores as part of the celebrations of the 1958 Centennial of the founding of the Mainland Colony. The object on its top is actually a light-socket, which I believe was intended for Christmas trees and other electrical fixtures. The mountain in the background is the eastward flank of Mt. McLean, the summit of Mission Ridge.