Cariboo

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Location of "the Cariboo" as a cultural/historical region, including the Chilcotin and Lillooet-Thompson areas South BC-NW USA-relief CaribooplusChilcotin.png
Location of "the Cariboo" as a cultural/historical region, including the Chilcotin and Lillooet-Thompson areas
Location of the Cariboo Plateau proper South BC-NW USA-relief CaribooPlateau2.png
Location of the Cariboo Plateau proper

The Cariboo is an intermontane region of British Columbia, Canada, centered on a plateau stretching from Fraser Canyon to the Cariboo Mountains. The name is a reference to the caribou that were once abundant in the region.

Contents

The Cariboo was the first region of the interior north of the lower Fraser River and its canyon to be settled by non-indigenous people, and played an important part in the early history of the colony and province. The boundaries of the Cariboo proper in its historical sense are debatable, but its original meaning was the region north of the forks of the Quesnel River and the low mountainous basins between the mouth of that river on the Fraser at the city of Quesnel and the northward end of the Cariboo Mountains, an area that is mostly in the Quesnel Highland and focused on several now-famous gold-bearing creeks near the head of the Willow River. The richest of them all, Williams Creek, is the location of Barkerville, which was the capital of the Cariboo Gold Rush and also of government officialdom for decades afterwards (it is now a museum town).

The Cariboo goldfields are underpopulated today but were once the most settled and most significant of the regions of interior British Columbia. As settlement spread southwards of this area, flanking the route of the Cariboo Road and spreading out through the rolling plateaus and benchlands of the Cariboo Plateau and lands adjoining it along the Fraser and Thompson rivers, the meaning changed to include a wider area than just the goldfields.

The grasslands of the Cariboo are home to the regionally endangered American badger (Taxidea taxus jeffersonii).

Name

As early as 1861, Governor Douglas used the name Cariboo to describe the area in dispatches to Britain. [1] :38

Notable towns

North Cariboo:

Central Cariboo:

South Cariboo:

See also

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Cottonwood River is a tributary of the Fraser River in the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada. Rising at the confluence of the Swift River and Lightning Creek at Coldspring House in the Cariboo goldfields of the northern Cariboo Plateau, it flows northwest and then turns southwest to join the Fraser just north of the city of Quesnel, which is at the confluence of the Quesnel River with the Fraser.

Cottonwood, British Columbia Place in British Columbia, Canada

Cottonwood, including the Cottonwood Ranch and Cottonwood House, is an unincorporated settlement in the North Cariboo region of the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada. Originally a ranch, it is located in the northern Cariboo Plateau, just 8 km northwest of Coldspring House, which is at the confluence of the Swift River and Lightning Creek, which is the beginning of the Cottonwood River. Lightning Creek was one of the more famous of the gold-bearing creeks of the Cariboo Gold Rush.

References

  1. Akrigg, G.P.V.; Akrigg, Helen B. (1986), British Columbia Place Names (3rd, 1997 ed.), Vancouver: UBC Press, ISBN   0-7748-0636-2

Coordinates: 52°00′N122°00′W / 52.000°N 122.000°W / 52.000; -122.000