BETWEEN THE WARS

With the opening of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway in 1917 and the advent of motorized transport, the colourful stage line with its system of road houses and staging-points disappeared along with the freight wagon. Ranches along the Cariboo Road soon found themselves without a ready market for hay and garden produce. The re-orientation to exclusive cattle ranching was not entirely successful although most ranches continued to survive. This lack of income through travelers resulted in three basic changes to the traditional ranching model that had prevailed since the early gold rush days. The first involved a move from the small ranch unit to larger holdings. Although there had been a move toward the consolidation of holdings for several decades and most of the large ranches had taken shape before the war, there was an increased trend toward the establishment of medium and large ranches after the war. More and more small ranchsteads were abandoned as available range land was consolidated under a single "home ranch" that served as the headquarters for a large number of once independent holdings. Typical of these large ranches were the Chilco Ranch, across the river from Hanceville, which came to comprise five formerly independent ranches, and the Felker Ranch at Lac la Hache, which eventually comprised nine separate holdings. However, these mega-ranches such as the Gang Ranch, that controlled close to a million acres through deeded land and grazing leases, and the Chilco Ranch, that had exclusive grazing rights on 850,000 acres, were not the norm. A typical ranch in the Cariboo-Chilcotin by the end of the 1930s comprised about 3000 acres and ran under 500 head of cattle. This is still very much the case today.

Bunkhouse at Chilko ranch, 1935.

The second change in Cariboo ranching at the end of World War I was the establishment of soldiers settlements. Thousands of soldiers returned to British Columbia looking for work and a livelihood for themselves. To facilitate this the government set up Soldier's Settlement Boards which encouraged returned soldiers to take up land . Unfortunately, shortly after the close of the war, most of the land that was suited for full- or part-time cattle raising in the Cariboo-Chilcotin had been acquired. Few new areas were available for pre-emption and the land available for pre-emption was marginal. The Forest Grove, Canim Lake and Red Lake areas attracted a few soldier settlers who were prepared to carve themselves a homestead out of the forest. In the Chilcotin, the Anahim Lake and Kleena Kleene areas were also settled at this time. But only small ranches were established by the soldiers returning from the war, and settlement by returned soldiers was on a small scale only.

Squiness Home at Anahim Lake, 1927.

Another trend in Cariboo-Chilcotin ranching in the years between the wars was toward the addition of tourist facilities to existing ranches. Many ranches opened resorts and hunting lodges in order to supplement their income from ranching. One of the first ranches to take advantage of the increased tourist traffic was the old Mountain House, first established by Phillip Grinder on the River Trail in 1868. In 1921 it was operated by Harry Coldwell who had re-named it Jesmond after his home in England. In that year, Coldwell constructed a lodge to house to house summer guests at the ranch, eventually adding a hunting camp and other tourist amenities to accommodate the tourist trade. Not long after this, the Pollard Ranch north of Clinton opened one of the first guest ranches in the Cariboo. During the summer months, the Pollard's Three Bar Ranch offered visitors a real ranching experience and, in the fall and early winter, the Pollard sons guided hunters into the nearby hills. These early successes led to the establishment of many dude ranches and tourist facilities throughout the ranching region of the Cariboo-Chilcotin. This added source of income was particularly beneficial in the more remote areas where ranching was more tenuous and started a trend that continues to this day.

History of Cariboo Ranching
Table of Contents