Basque, British Columbia, is located in the province of British Columbia, Canada, near the village of Ashcroft. It is the post office and whistlestop-crossing on the historic Basque Ranch, one of the earliest ranches in the Interior of British Columbia. One of the descendants of the Basque family is Garnet Basque, a notable popular historian in BC who has written extensively on ranching and the gold rush history.
Basque is notable as the location where the Canadian Northern Railway drove its Last Spike in 1915.
Basque is a connection point between the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railroads in the lower Thompson River Valley. This is where the uni-directional running of both railroads stops and they revert to running both ways on their own tracks. The other point is at Mission, just east of Vancouver.
Coordinates: 50°37′28″N121°20′09″W / 50.624569°N 121.33584°W
Cache Creek is a historic transportation junction and incorporated village 354 kilometres (220 mi) northeast of Vancouver in British Columbia, Canada. It is on the Trans-Canada Highway in the province of British Columbia at a junction with Highway 97. The same intersection and the town that grew around it was at the point on the Cariboo Wagon Road where a branch road, and previously only a trail, led east to Savona's Ferry on Kamloops Lake. This community is also the point at which a small stream, once known as Riviere de la Cache, joins the Bonaparte River.
Marble Canyon is in the south-central Interior of British Columbia, a few kilometres east of the Fraser River and the community of Pavilion, midway between the towns of Lillooet and Cache Creek. The canyon stems from a collapsed karst formation.
The Gustafsen Lake standoff was a confrontation between the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the Ts'peten Defenders in the interior of British Columbia, Canada, at Gustafsen Lake.
Cornwall Hills Provincial Park is a provincial park in British Columbia, Canada, immediately west of Cache Creek, protecting part of the Cornwall Hills including their highest summit which features an old fire lookout.
Elephant Hill Provincial Park is a provincial park in British Columbia, Canada protecting Elephant Hill, a prominent landmark adjacent to the Trans-Canada Highway at the cut-off for the town of Ashcroft a few miles south of the town of Cache Creek. The park is approximately 968 hectares in area.
Goldpan Provincial Park is a provincial park in British Columbia, Canada, located on the Trans-Canada Highway between Lytton (W) and Spences Bridge (E), on the Thompson River. The park has camping above the highway and a picnic area and riverfront below.
The Bonaparte Indian Band a.k.a. Bonaparte First Nation, is a member band of the Shuswap Nation Tribal Council of the Secwepemc (Shuswap) people.
Ashcroft Manor Ranch, known also as Ashcroft Ranch, is an historic ranch in the Thompson Country of British Columbia, Canada, founded by Clement Francis Cornwall and his brother, Henry Cornwall. Ashcroft Manor's main house and buildings are an historic site adjacent to the Trans-Canada Highway and the Canadian Pacific mainline, which named its whistlestop at the current site of the village of Ashcroft after it, naming it Ashcroft Station. The Ashcroft Manor is located on the Trans-Canada Hwy #1, at the junction for southern cutoff from the highway to the town of Ashcroft below on the Thompson River.
Celilo Canal was a canal connecting two points of the Columbia River between the states of Oregon and Washington, U.S. just east of The Dalles.
Lac La Hache is a recreational and retirement community in the Cariboo region of British Columbia, Canada. Located on the shore of Lac La Hache alongside British Columbia Highway 97 near the regional centre of 100 Mile House, the community's origins date to the days of the Cariboo Gold Rush and the Cariboo Wagon Road, for which it provided an important roadhouse. Lac La Hache, or "The Lake of the Axe" as it translates to, was named, during the fur trade era, after the unfortunate incident of a French-Canadian voyageur who lost his axe head while chopping a hole in the ice. It is a town rich in history, as it sits along the Gold Rush Trail.
Monte Creek is a rural locality on the South Thompson River east of Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, approximately equidistant from Kamloops and the village of Chase, British Columbia. It is a major highway junction where British Columbia Highway 97 branches off from the Trans-Canada Highway south towards the Okanagan via Falkland and Westwold. Monte Lake, a recreational community on the shores of the lake of the same name, is a few miles south of the junction.
Hat Creek is a tributary of the Bonaparte River in British Columbia, Canada, joining that stream at Carquile, which is also known as Lower Hat Creek and is the site of the Hat Creek Ranch heritage museum and visitor centre. The Hat Creek basin includes a broad upper plateau area encircled by the gentle but high summits of the Clear Range and, to its east, the Cornwall Hills; this area is known as Upper Hat Creek. Adjacent to Upper Hat Creek is the gateway to Marble Canyon and a rancherie of the Pavilion First Nation, who are both a St'at'imc and Secwepemc people. During the Fraser Canyon and Cariboo Gold Rushes an important trail northwards from the lower Fraser Canyon led from Foster Bar on the Fraser via Laluwissen Creek into Upper Hat Creek, then via the creek to the Bonaparte River. The economy of the basin is ranching-based and includes some of the oldest ranches in the British Columbia Interior. On the northwest edge of the Upper Hat Creek basin there is a large lignite deposit and several exploratory pits, some dating back to the 19th century but some more recent, part of an intended, but now shelved Hat Creek coal-thermal proposal.
Foster Bar, originally known as Foster's Bar, is a gold-bearing sandbar in the Fraser Canyon of British Columbia, Canada as well as the name used for the surrounding locality, which includes Nesikep Indian Reserve 6 and Nesikep Indian Reserve 6A of the Cayoose Creek First Nation of the St'at'imc people and Lytton Indian Reserves Nos. 6A and 5B and Seah Indian Reserve No. 5 of the Lytton First Nation of the Nlaka'pamux people.
Siska, also known historically as Cisco, is a locality in the Fraser Canyon of British Columbia, Canada 9.4 kilometres south of the town of Lytton. It is at Siska that the Canadian Pacific and Canadian National Railways switch from one side of the river to the other, because it is impossible for both rail lines to occupy the same bank of the Fraser, due to the narrow and steep terrain. The resulting pair of bridges, with the CNR bridge just upstream of the CPR's, and the CPR's bridge's west foot entering the Cantilever Bar Tunnel into the side of Cisco Bluff, remains one of the most famous images of the CPR's route through British Columbia today and is easily viewable from the adjacent Trans-Canada Highway.
Arrowstone Provincial Park is a provincial park in the Thompson Country of the Southern Interior of British Columbia, Canada, located to the northeast of the town of Cache Creek. The park was established by Order-in-Council in 1996 with an area of 6203 hectares. In 2000 its boundaries were slightly reduced, such that its area is now 6175 hectares.
Pavilion Mountain is a mountain in the Marble Range in the South Cariboo region of the South-Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada, located northeast of the ranching and First Nations community of Pavilion and to the north of Marble Canyon and immediately south of Kelly Lake, which is the focus of Downing Provincial Park. The term Pavilion Mountain is also used to refer to the historic ranch and associated rangeland on the "bench" on the mountain's southwestern side, and also to the road which traverses that benchland and the mountain's western shoulder and is the route of the Old Cariboo Road. The switchback descent from the summit of the road was known as the Rattlesnake Grade and was an infamous stretch of the old wagon road. From a junction at the road-summit, a road leads east along the spine of the mountain to the peak, which is the site of a microwave relay and former fire lookout. The mountain's only named subpeak, Mount Carson, at 2005 metres, is southeast of the fire lookout and is named for the original owner of the ranch and was briefly misapplied as the name of Pavilion Mountain. Robert Carson was one of the first settlers in the region and whose sons later became prominent MLAs and provincial cabinet ministers. The north wall of Marble Canyon is essentially the southeast buttress of Pavilion Mountain.
The Cisco Bridges are a pair of railroad bridges at Siska near Lytton, British Columbia, Canada. The Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian National Railway both follow the route of the Fraser River, one on each side, and the routes exchange sides at this point. The easier CPR route was laid first; when the CNR arrived later they needed to follow the more difficult route. The area is popular with railfans due to the proximity of the two bridges, and the easy access to the area is parallel to both bridges down the east bank of the river. Directional running in the Fraser Canyon means that both CPR and CNR trains may be seen on both bridges. Although this area is generally known as Cisco, the actual CN timetable station point of Cisco is approximately 4.0 km (2.5 mi) to the east of the bridges.
Richfield is a ghost town located in the Cariboo region of British Columbia, Canada. The town is situated beside Williams Creek.
The Cornwall Hills are a range of mountainous hills in the Thompson Country of the Interior of British Columbia, Canada. They are located west and southwest of the communities of Cache Creek and Ashcroft and form the divide between the basin of the Thompson and that of Upper Hat Creek to the west. Named for Clement Francis Cornwall, distinguished colonist and later Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia, and his brother Henry, who owned the Ashcroft Manor Ranch, also known as the Cornwall Ranch, which lay on the western slope of these hills. To their north are the Trachyte Hills, as far as the middle basin of Hat Creek and ending at Lower Hat Creek, and to their south is part of the Clear Range which forms the rest of the basin divide around Hat Creek.
Glen Fraser is a locality in the central Fraser Canyon of the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada, located c. 18 miles north of the town of Lillooet and between the communities of Fountain (S) and Pavilion. It is a ranching area formed of benchlands on the west side of the Fraser and is the location of the Keatley Creek Archaeological Site, one of Canada's most important ongoing investigations. The name was conferred as that of a railway stop on the Pacific Great Eastern Railway, now Canadian National.