Seton River

Last updated
Seton River
Location
Country Canada
Province British Columbia
District Lillooet Land District
Cariboo Land District
Physical characteristics
Source Anderson Lake
  coordinates 50°42′10″N122°18′10″W / 50.70278°N 122.30278°W / 50.70278; -122.30278 [1]
  elevation251 m (823 ft) [2]
Mouth Fraser River
  location
Lillooet
  coordinates
50°40′51″N121°55′43″W / 50.68083°N 121.92861°W / 50.68083; -121.92861 Coordinates: 50°40′51″N121°55′43″W / 50.68083°N 121.92861°W / 50.68083; -121.92861 [3]
  elevation
188 m (617 ft) [2]
Basin size1,020 km2 (390 sq mi) [4]
Discharge 
  location mouth [4]
  average22.7 m3/s (800 cu ft/s) [4]
  minimum2.86 m3/s (101 cu ft/s)
  maximum177 m3/s (6,300 cu ft/s)

The Seton River is a tributary of the Fraser River in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The name is relatively new, and encompasses what had formerly been the Seton Portage River or Portage Creek (aka Portage River) and Seton Creek [3] (which shows up on some topos as "Section Creek" due to a mis-read of old hand-written maps).[ citation needed ]

Contents

Course

The Seton River originates at the foot of Anderson Lake and runs initially for only 3 km to the head of Seton Lake. From the foot of Seton Lake to the Fraser its remaining course is 5 km in length, with much of its flow diverted via the Seton Canal to the Seton Powerhouse (also known because of its location as the Lillooet Powerhouse). The river's course is generally eastward to join the Fraser River at the town of Lillooet. [3] The upper section between the lakes was historically known as the Portage River or Seton Portage River; its flow is augmented by Whitecap Creek, from the northwest midway along its length, and by Spider Creek nearer Seton Lake. The lower section was formerly named Seton Creek and commonly mislabelled on some maps as "Section Creek", apparently a misrendering of the archaic spelling Seaton Creek. Just below the foot of Seton Lake its flow is considerably augmented by the addition of the waters of Cayoosh Creek, a name which originally applied all the way to the Fraser until the name "Seton River" was coined by the Canadian Geographic Names Board in 1950. [5] "Cayoosh Creek" is still generally applied to the river below that point by local residents, often with the spelling "Cayoose Creek", which is also the old name of the Sekw’el’wás First Nation (i.e. "Cayoose Creek Indian Band").

Above Anderson Lake, the main watercourse of the Seton drainage is named the Gates River; numerous creeks along Anderson lake contribute substantially to the volume supplied by the Gates; these include McGillivray Creek, Haylmore Creek, and Lost Valley Creek.

See also

Related Research Articles

Seton Portage Unincorporated community in British Columbia, Canada

Seton Portage is a community located on a narrow strip of land between Anderson Lake and Seton Lake in Squamish-Lillooet Regional District, British Columbia. The community is home to two Seton Lake First Nation communities at either end of the portage and a non-native recreational community between them. Local services include a post office, fire department, library, and general store, among other small businesses. The community is also the location of Seton Portage Historic Provincial Park, a small provincial park protecting a historically significant stretch of railway.

Fraser Canyon

The Fraser Canyon is a major landform of the Fraser River where it descends rapidly through narrow rock gorges in the Coast Mountains en route from the Interior Plateau of British Columbia to the Fraser Valley. Colloquially, the term "Fraser Canyon" is often used to include the Thompson Canyon from Lytton to Ashcroft, since they form the same highway route which most people are familiar with, although it is actually reckoned to begin above Williams Lake, British Columbia at Soda Creek Canyon near the town of the same name.

Bridge River

The Bridge River is an approximately 120 kilometres (75 mi) long river in southern British Columbia. It flows south-east from the Coast Mountains. Until 1961, it was a major tributary of the Fraser River, entering that stream about six miles upstream from the town of Lillooet; its flow, however, was near-completely diverted into Seton Lake with the completion of the Bridge River Power Project, with the water now entering the Fraser just south of Lillooet as a result.

Seton Lake

Seton Lake is a freshwater fjord draining east via the Seton River into the Fraser River at the town of Lillooet, about 22 km (14 mi) long, 26.2 km2 (10.1 sq mi) in area and lies at an elevation of 243 m (797 ft). Its depth is 460 m (1,500 ft).

Douglas Road

The Douglas Road, a.k.a. the Lillooet Trail, Harrison Trail or Lakes Route, was a goldrush-era transportation route from the British Columbia Coast to the Interior. Over 30,000 men are reckoned to have travelled the route in, although by the end of the 1860s it was virtually abandoned due to the construction of the Cariboo Wagon Road, which bypassed the region.

Cayoosh Range

The Cayoosh Range is the northernmost section of the Lillooet Ranges, which are a subrange of the Pacific Ranges of the Coast Mountains in British Columbia, Canada. The range covers an area of c. 3770 km² and is approximately 65 km (40 mi) SW to NE and about 20 km (12 mi) SE to NW.

Cayoosh Gold Rush

The Cayoosh Gold Rush was one of several in the history of the region surrounding Lillooet, British Columbia, Canada. If estimates of its yield are true, it would be one of the richest single finds in the gold mining history of that province.

N'Quatqua, variously spelled Nequatque, N'quat'qua, is the proper historic name in the St'at'imcets language for the First Nations village of the Stl'atl'imx people of the community of D'Arcy, which is at the upper end of Anderson Lake about 35 miles southeast of Lillooet and about the same distance from Pemberton. The usage is synonymous with Nequatque Indian Reserve No. 1, which is 177 ha. in size and located adjacent to the mouth of the Gates River.

Bridge River Power Project

The Bridge River Power Project is a hydroelectric power development in the Canadian province of British Columbia, located in the Lillooet Country between Whistler and Lillooet. It harnesses the power of the Bridge River, a tributary of the Fraser, by diverting it through a mountainside to the separate drainage basin of Seton Lake, utilizing a system of three dams, four powerhouses and a canal.

Seton may refer to:

DArcy, British Columbia Place in British Columbia, Canada

D'Arcy is an unincorporated community in the Canadian province of British Columbia, approximately 150 kilometres northeast of the city of Vancouver. Located at the head of Anderson Lake, D'Arcy, also known as Nequatque or N'Quatqua in the St'at'imcets (Lillooet) language, is partly a recreational and resource community and also the territory and residential area of the N'Quatqua First Nation.

The Lillooet Country, also referred to as the Lillooet District, is a region spanning from the central Fraser Canyon town of Lillooet west to the valley of the Lillooet River, and including the valleys in between, in the Southern Interior of British Columbia. Like other historical BC regions, it is sometimes referred to simply as The Lillooet or even Lillooet,.

Vessels of the Lakes Route

The Lakes Route is an alternate name for the Douglas Road, which was the first formally designated "road" into the Interior of British Columbia, Canada from its Lower Mainland area flanking the Lower Fraser River. Also known as the Douglas-Lillooet Trail or the Lillooet Trail, the route consisted of a series of wagon roads connected via lake travel in between. A variety of craft were used on the lakes, from steamboats to sail-driven rafts to, through the early 20th Century, diesel and other engines. Lake travel continued for commerce, passenger travel and heavy freight until after World War II.

Cayoosh Pass is a mountain pass in the Lillooet Ranges of the Pacific Ranges of the southern Coast Mountains in British Columbia, Canada. It lies just west of Duffey Lake on BC Highway 99 between the towns of Lillooet and Pemberton, formed by the headwaters of Cayoosh Creek to the east, flowing to the Fraser River at Lillooet, and Joffre Creek to the west, flowing steeply downhill to Lillooet Lake just southeast of the Mount Currie Indian Reserve.

Pemberton Pass, 505 m (1,657 ft), also formerly known as Mosquito Pass, is the lowest point on the divide between the Lillooet and Fraser River drainages, located at Birken, British Columbia, Canada, in the principal valley connecting and between Pemberton and Lillooet. The pass is a steep-sided but flat-bottomed valley adjacent to Mount Birkenhead and forming a divide between Poole Creek, a tributary of the Birkenhead River, which joins the Lillooet at Lillooet Lake, and the Gates River which flows northeast from Gates Lake, at the summit of the pass, which flows to the Fraser via Anderson and Seton Lakes and the Seton River.

The Seton Canal is a diversion of the flow of the Seton River from Seton Dam, just below the flow of Seton Lake, to the Seton Powerhouse on the Fraser River at the town of Lillooet, British Columbia, Canada. The canal bridges Cayoosh Creek 300m below its commencement and is about 3.5 km in length, ending just below a bridge used by the Texas Creek Road, where the canal's waterflow is fed into tunnels which feed the Seton Powerhouse on the farther side of a small rocky hill. Most of the water carried by the canal is the volume of the diverted Bridge River, which is fed into Seton Lake via BC Hydro's Bridge River generating stations at Shalalth, 16 km to the west, which are supplied by diversion tunnels through Mission Ridge from Carpenter Lake, the reservoir created by Terzaghi Dam.

The Gates River is a short river in the Lillooet Country of the Southern Interior of British Columbia, Canada. Approximately 14.5 km in length, it flows generally northeast from the outlet of Birken Lake to its mouth at the head of Anderson Lake. Its main tributaries are Haylmore Creek, from the southeast, and Blackwater Creek, from the northwest, which originates near the head of Birkenhead Lake. Augmented by the waters of McGillivray Creek, Lost Valley Creek and others, its flow becomes the Seton River from the foot of Anderson Lake onwards.

Cayoosh Creek River in Canada

Cayoosh Creek is a northeast-flowing tributary of the Seton River in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The name Cayoosh Creek remains on the bridge-sign crossing the stream on BC Highway 99 and continues in use locally to refer to the final reaches of the Seton River, formerly Seton Creek, which prior to the renaming ending at the confluence with Cayoosh Creek. The creek is the namesake of Cayoosh Creek Indian Reserve No. 1, one of the main Indian reserves of the Cayoose Creek Indian Band, which lies adjacent to what was renamed the Seton River without local consultation.

Mission Ridge, also known as Mission Mountain, is a ridge in the Bridge River-Lillooet Country of the South-Central Interior of British Columbia, Canada, extending westward from the town of Lillooet along the north side of Seton Lake to Mission Pass, which is immediately above and to the north of the lakeside community of Shalalth. The road over the pass is also known as Mission Mountain, which is short for "Mission Mountain Road". Mission Creek lies on the north side of the pass, and is a tributary of the Bridge River, the lower reaches of which lie on the north side of the ridge, and which was the only road access into the upper Bridge River Country before the construction of a road through the Bridge River Canyon in the mid-1950s opened that region up to road access from the lower Bridge River valley and the town of Lillooet via the community or Moha. Most, or virtually all, of the ridge, is Indian Reserves, notably Slosh 1, under the administration of the Seton Lake Indian Band, and Bridge River 1, which is under the administration of the Bridge River Indian Band. Parts of the ridge's eastern end are in reserves controlled by the Lillooet Indian Band, including its final spires above Lillooet, which were dubbed St. Mary's Mount by the Reverend Lundin Brown in the 1860s, though that name never stuck and is ungazetted.

The Bridge River Rapids, also known as the Six Mile Rapids, the Lower Fountain, the Bridge River Fishing Grounds, and in the St'at'imcets language as Sat' or Setl, is a set of rapids on the Fraser River, located in the central Fraser Canyon at the mouth of the Bridge River six miles north of the confluence of Cayoosh Creek with the Fraser and on the northern outskirts of the District of Lillooet, British Columbia, Canada.

References

  1. Outlet of Anderson Lake
  2. 1 2 Elevation derived from ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model, using GeoLocator, and BCGNIS coordinates.
  3. 1 2 3 "Seton River". BC Geographical Names.
  4. 1 2 3 "Archived Hydrometric Data Search". Water Survey of Canada. Archived from the original on 24 December 2010. Retrieved 16 August 2013. Search for Station 08ME003 Seton River near Lillooet
  5. BC Names/GeoBC entry "Cayoosh Creek"