Horsefly River

Last updated
Horsefly River
Location
Country Canada
Province British Columbia
Physical characteristics
SourceNear Wells Gray Provincial Park
 - coordinates 52°22′N120°31′W / 52.367°N 120.517°W / 52.367; -120.517 [1]
River mouth Quesnel River
 - coordinates 52°28′N121°23′W / 52.467°N 121.383°W / 52.467; -121.383 Coordinates: 52°28′N121°23′W / 52.467°N 121.383°W / 52.467; -121.383 [1]
Length98 km (61 mi) [2]

The Horsefly River is a river in the Cariboo district of British Columbia, Canada. Originating near the Wells Gray Provincial Park, it flows into Quesnel Lake, the source of the Quesnel River which in turn is a major tributary of the Fraser River. The Horsefly River is the largest inflow for Quesnel Lake, draining 2750 km2 of the Interior Plateau. It is also a spawning ground for sockeye, chinook and coho salmon. Fossil insects, fish and plants have been collected from Eocene Epoch lake sediments exposed along the river banks. [3] [4]

Cariboo

The Cariboo is an intermontane region of British Columbia along a plateau stretching from the Fraser Canyon to the Cariboo Mountains. The name is a reference to the caribou that were once abundant in the region. The Cariboo was the first region of the Interior north of the lower Fraser 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, the location of Barkerville, which was the capital of the Cariboo Gold Rush and also of government officialdom for decades afterwards. This area, the Cariboo goldfields, is underpopulated today but was once the most settled and most powerful of the regions of the province's Interior. 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, the meaning changed to include a wider area than the goldfields.

British Columbia Province of Canada

British Columbia is the westernmost province of Canada, located between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. With an estimated population of 5.016 million as of 2018, it is Canada's third-most populous province.

Canada Country in North America

Canada is a country in the northern part of North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering 9.98 million square kilometres, making it the world's second-largest country by total area. Canada's southern border with the United States is the world's longest bi-national land border. Its capital is Ottawa, and its three largest metropolitan areas are Toronto, Montreal, and Vancouver. As a whole, Canada is sparsely populated, the majority of its land area being dominated by forest and tundra. Consequently, its population is highly urbanized, with over 80 percent of its inhabitants concentrated in large and medium-sized cities, many near the southern border. Canada's climate varies widely across its vast area, ranging from arctic weather in the north, to hot summers in the southern regions, with four distinct seasons.

See also

Related Research Articles

Quesnel, British Columbia City in British Columbia, Canada

Quesnel is a small city that is part of the Cariboo Regional District of British Columbia, Canada. Located nearly evenly between the cities of Prince George and Williams Lake, it is on the main route to northern British Columbia and Yukon. Quesnel is located at the confluence of the Fraser and Quesnel Rivers. The Rocky Mountaineer train also travels through and stops overnight in Quesnel.

Dakelh ethnic group

The Dakelh or Carrier are the indigenous people of a large portion of the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada.

Cariboo Regional District Regional District in British Columbia, Canada

The Cariboo Regional District spans the Cities and Districts of Quesnel, Williams Lake, 100 Mile House, and Wells in the Central Interior of British Columbia.

Cariboo Gold Rush

The Cariboo Gold Rush was a gold rush in the Colony of British Columbia, which earlier joined the Canadian province of British Columbia. The first gold discovery was made at Hills Bar in 1858, followed by more strikes in 1859 on the Horsefly River, and on Keithley Creek and Antler Creek in 1860. The actual rush didn’t begin until 1861, when these discoveries were widely publicized. By 1865, following the strikes along Williams Creek, the rush was in full swing.

Quesnel River river in Canada

The Quesnel River is a major tributary of the Fraser River in the Cariboo District of central British Columbia. It begins at the outflow of Quesnel Lake, at the town of Likely and flows for about 100 kilometres (60 mi) northwest to its confluence with the Fraser at the city of Quesnel.

Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park is a provincial park in British Columbia, Canada. Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park covers 23 ha of the Bulkley River Valley, on the east side of Driftwood Creek, a tributary of the Bulkley River, 10 km northeast of the town of Smithers. The park is accessible from Driftwood Road from Provincial Highway 16. It was created in 1967 by the donation of the land by the late Gordon Harvey (1913–1976) to protect fossil beds on the east side of Driftwood Creek. The beds were discovered around the beginning of the 20th century. The park lands are part of the asserted traditional territory of the Wet'suwet'en First Nation.

Likely, British Columbia human settlement in British Columbia, Canada

Likely is a community in British Columbia, Canada. It is located in the Cariboo region of the province, and is situated where the west arm of Quesnel Lake empties into the Quesnel River. Roads from Likely lead southwest to Williams Lake, northwest to Quesnel, south to Horsefly, and north to Barkerville. Likely is in the Quesnel Highland, a transition zone between the Cariboo Plateau and the Cariboo Mountains.

Quesnel Highland mountain in Canada

The Quesnel Highland is a geographic area in the Central Interior of the Canadian province of British Columbia. As defined by BC government geographer in Landforms of British Columbia, an account and analysis of British Columbia geography that is often cited as authoritative, the Highland is a complex of upland hill and plateau areas forming and defined as being the buffer between the Cariboo Plateau and the Cariboo Mountains, as a sort of highland foothills along the eastern edge of the Interior Plateau running southeast from a certain point southeast of the city of Prince George to the Mahood Lake area at the southeast corner of the Cariboo. Beyond Mahood Lake lies another separately classified area dubbed by Holland the Shuswap Highland which spans similar terrain across the North Thompson and Shuswap Lake-Adams River drainage basins, forming a similar upland-area buffer between the Thompson Plateau and the Monashee Mountains. A third area, the Okanagan Highland, extends from the southern end of the Shuswap Highland in the area of Vernon and Enderby in the northern Okanagan region into Washington State, and also abuts the Monashee Mountains.

Quesnel Lake glacial lake

Quesnel Lake is a glacial lake or fjord in British Columbia, Canada, and is the major tertiary of the Fraser River. With a maximum depth of 610 meters, it is claimed to be the deepest fjord lake in the world, the fifth-deepest lake in BC, and the deepest lake in the Cariboo region.

Gustavus Blin Wright Canadian gold prospector

Gustavus Blin Wright was a pioneer roadbuilder and entrepreneur in British Columbia, Canada. His biggest achievement was building the Old Cariboo Road to the Cariboo gold fields, from Lillooet to Fort Alexandria, but he was also a partner in a freighting firm that operated on the Douglas Road, he ran a toll bridge at Bridge River, near Lillooet, and built part of the road from Quesnel to Barkerville. He was also the original owner of the town of 70 Mile House.

Horsefly, formerly known as Harper's Camp, is an unincorporated community in the Cariboo region of British Columbia, Canada. It is located between the Cariboo Mountains and Quesnel Lake.

Cariboo River river in Canada

The Cariboo River is a tributary of the Quesnel River, one of the main tributaries of the Fraser River, in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It flows through the Cariboo region of the British Columbia Interior, southeast of Prince George. Above Cariboo Lake it was formerly known as the Swamp River. The name was adopted, and replaced the former names, in 1936 in association with Cariboo Lake.

<i>Amyzon</i> (genus) extinct genus of fishes

Amyzon is an extinct genus belonging to the sucker family Catostomidae first described in 1872 by E. D. Cope. There are 4 valid species in the genus. Amyzon are found in North American fossil sites dated from the Early Eocene in Washington USA, and several Early Eocene sites in British Columbia Canada including the McAbee Fossil Beds, Driftwood Canyon, and the Horsefly Beds, as well as Early Oligocene sites in Nevada USA.

Horsefly Lake is a lake in the eastern Cariboo region of the Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada. With a maximum depth of 632 feet (193 m), it is one of the Cariboo's deepest lakes. It lies at the head of the Horsefly River, a tributary of the Quesnel River, and is one of several large lakes at the verge of the Cariboo Plateau (W) and the Cariboo Mountains (E); Quesnel Lake, the largest of those, is to its north and northwest. The lake's name first appeared on maps with Joseph Trutch's 1871 publication, and is credited with being so named because of the preponderance of horseflies in the area during summer.

Pseudosiobla campbelli is an extinct species of sawfly in the family Tenthredinidae that is known from early Eocene Ypresian stage lake deposits near the unincorporated community of Horsefly, British Columbia.

Hobson Lake is the uppermost lake on the Clearwater River in east-central British Columbia, Canada. Hobson Lake is one of the six major lakes in Wells Gray Provincial Park.

Klondike Mountain Formation

The Klondike Mountain Formation is an early Eocene geological formation located in the northeast central area of Washington State. The formation, named for the type location designated in 1962, Klondike Mountain north of Republic, Washington, is composed of volcanic rocks in the upper unit and volcanics plus lacustrine (lakebed) sedimentation in which a lagerstätte with exceptionally well-preserved plant and insect fossils has been found, along with fossil epithermal hot springs.

The Princeton Chert is a fossil locality in British Columbia, Canada, that represents one of the best preserved collections of Eocene Epoch floras in the world, with rich species abundance and diversity. It is located on the east bank of the Similkameen River, 8.5 km (5.3 mi) south of the town of Princeton in the Regional District of Okanagan-Similkameen.

McAbee Fossil Beds

The McAbee Fossil Beds is a Heritage Site that protects an Eocene Epoch fossil locality east of Cache Creek, British Columbia, Canada, just north of and visible from Provincial Highway 97 / the Trans-Canada Highway at 50°47.831′N121°8.469′W. The McAbee Fossil Beds, comprising 548.23 hectares, were officially designated a Provincial Heritage Site under British Columbia's Heritage Conservation Act on July 19, 2012. The site is part of an old lake bed which was deposited about 52 million years ago and is internationally recognised for the diversity of plant, insect, and fish fossils found there. Similar fossil beds in Eocene lake sediments, also known for their well preserved plant, insect and fish fossils, are found at Driftwood Canyon Provincial Park near Smithers in northern British Columbia, on the Horsefly River near Quesnel in central British Columbia, and at Republic in Washington, United States. The Princeton Chert fossil beds in southern British Columbia are also Eocene, but primarily preserve an aquatic plant community. A recent review of the early Eocene fossil sites from the interior of British Columbia discusses the history of paleobotanical research at McAbee, the Princeton Chert, Driftwood Canyon, and related Eocene fossil sites such as at Republic.

References

[5]

  1. 1 2 "Horsefly River". BC Geographical Names.
  2. Horsefly River, British Columbia Heritage Rivers Program, BC Ministry of Environment
  3. Wilson, M.V.H. (1977). "Middle Eocene freshwater fishes from British Columbia". Life Sciences Contributions, Royal Ontario Museum. No. 113: 1–66.
  4. Archibald, S.B.; Greenwood, D.R.; Smith, R.Y.; Mathewes, R.W.; Basinger, J.F. (2012). "Great Canadian Lagerstätten 1. Early Eocene Lagerstätten of the Okanagan Highlands (British Columbia and Washington State)". Geoscience Canada 38 (4): 155–164.
  5. "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-07-06. Retrieved 2007-06-17.