Old Cariboo Road

rdf:langString Old Cariboo Road

rdf:langString The Old Cariboo Road is a reference to the original wagon road to the Cariboo gold fields in what is now the Canadian province of British Columbia. It should not be confused with the Cariboo Road, which was built slightly later and used a different route. It was built from Lillooet to Alexandria, beginning in 1859, and was a precursor to the slightly later Cariboo Wagon Road that was built from Yale via Cache Creek-Ashcroft. Access to the start of the road at Lillooet was made by the Douglas Road or Lakes Route from Port Douglas, at the head of Harrison Lake. It is the mileages from Lillooet on the Old Cariboo Road, properly known as the Lillooet-Alexandria Road, that the "road house" placenames of British Columbia, such as 100 Mile House, are measured. The road was a toll-route and built by private contractor Gustavus Blin-Wright, a prominent British-Swedish entrepreneur in colonial British Columbia who also contracted to build roads and provide steamer services in the Kootenay region. Blin-Wright also operated the steamer which connected the end of the road at Alexandria with Quesnel (then Quesnellemouthe). When the Cariboo Road proper was built, it converged with the existing route of the Old Cariboo Road at Clinton, and followed the earlier road to Alexandria, but was extended up the Fraser from there to Quesnel (thereby eliminating the need for steamer travel on that stretch of the upper Fraser) and completed eastward from there to Barkerville. It was along this route that an attempt was made to use Bactrian camels purchased from the U.S. Camel Corps for freight, and also a tractor-style known as a "road train", one of the earliest motorized vehicles.