THE RAILWAY ERA (1885-1917)

The period from 1885 to 1917 saw the completion of two trans-continental railway lines and a provincial railway. Not only that, but also the invention and spread of motorized transportation influenced the construction and improvement of roads throughout the Cariboo and Chilcotin areas. At the beginning of the railway era, settlement was still largely oriented to the major routes of travel, but towards the turn of the century settlers pushed beyond the established routes and occupied the more remote areas where grasslands and meadows.

The Canadian Pacific Railway began operating trans-continental trains in 1886. With its completion, the ranchers of the Cariboo-Chilcotin not longer had to drive their cattle to the coast to ship them to market. Ashcroft became the main centre for shipping cattle from the Cariboo and Chilcotin ranges. But for the ranchers in the Williams Lake and Chilcotin areas, this still meant a long overland cattle drive. The Cariboo ranchers followed the Cariboo Road or the River Trail to Ashcroft but the few ranchers in the Chilcotin had to drive their cattle across the Chilcotin River to Big Creek and the Gang Ranch, then across the Fraser River at Churn Creek. From there the cattle were driven to Clinton and then down the Cariboo Road to Ashcroft. By 1890 there was a ferry on the Fraser at Churn Creek and, in the winter of 1892-93, a bridge was built across the Chilcotin River at Hanceville. Unfortunately this bridge was swept away by high water the next June and had to be rebuilt, only to be damaged by high water again in 1906.

Churn Creek Ferry in the ice, 1904.

For the ranchers of the Cariboo-Chilcotin, the railway did not spell instant prosperity. This was the case with William Pinchbeck. He had returned to England in 1884 and brought back with him a bride, Alice Kilham, 17 years his junior. On his return trip, Pinchbeck purchased a portable steam-powered sawmill to be shipped to Williams Lake. With the arrival of the machinery, Pinchbeck began an ambitious building program. Perhaps to impress his young bride, he began construction of an elegant two-story frame residence at the lower end of his property overlooking Williams Lake, relegating his native wife to a small house further down the lake. The "Lake House" as it was known as was huge and contained all of the best that could be obtained. At the same time, he also began to build a large two-story frame roadhouse at Mission Creek or what was called the "upper farm." To finance these new buildings and to buoy up his sagging cash flow, Pinchbeck borrowed $20,000 from the Western Ranching Company in 1887. This company was looking for ranchland to invest in and the following year were to purchase the entire Gang Ranch from Thaddeus Harper. The loan was secured by Pinchbeck's extensive land holdings and cattle.

William Pinchbeck, [ca. 1880].

Pinchbeck's partner, William Lyne, had parted with his native wife some years earlier. In 1887 he met and married Mary Collingsworth in Victoria and returned to the Cariboo with her. But the isolated location did not seem to agree with her and the couple moved to Ashcroft, selling out their interest in the ranch to Pinchbeck. While rich in assets, Pinchbeck, like most of the ranchers in the Cariboo at the time, had a very limited cash flow. At the time of his death in 1893, William Pinchbeck was in debt to the Western Ranching Company for over $23,000. The company took over the ranch and held onto it for several years, eventually selling to Bob Borland who operated the "lower" ranch himself and leased the upper ranch to Mike Minton, a Chilcotin rancher.

Mud Pups

As British Columbia took its place as a bastion of the British Empire, it became fashionable for the well-to-do families of Great Britain to encourage their younger sons to look to ranching for an acceptable source of income. Many families encouraged their younger sons to emigrate to the "colony" of British Columbia to make a life for themselves and "raise the flag of empire" in the new world. Many of these younger sons received a regular payment from home to help them in their new home and this gave rise to the rather pejorative term "remittance men" referring to those who, unlike the rank and file, did not have to work to make a living. But for many of the more sensible families, it seemed more appropriate to send the money to a rancher who would train the younger son in the intricacies of ranching so the son could learn a way of eventually making their own livelihood. In the interior of British Columbia these paying students were called "mud pups", a term that initially expressed disdain from those who had paid and continued to pay their own way. But, as more of these mud pups stayed and became hard working cowboys and successful ranchers, the term took on less of a negative ring and simply designated someone who had arrived under favourable circumstances and worked as hard as everyone else to make a go of things.

Such was the case with Hugh Peel Lane Bayliffe, whose ancestors included the Peels who produced two Prime Ministers of England as well as the Lane family who were Mayors of Hereford. Bayliffe came as an 18 year old to British Columbia in 1882 and presented himself to Clement Cornwall at Ashcroft Manor. Cornwall arranged for him to work for William Roper at Cherry Creek west of Kamloops in order to learn the ranching business. Bayliffe learned his trade well. He became an excellent rider and was often called upon to break a bronc that no one else could handle. He was skilful with a rope as well. William Roper was one of the first to attempt at improving stock, importing Hereford cattle and Clydesdale horses, and Bayliffe saw the advantages of purebred stock before most ranchers considered it to be of any use. Before long he became Roper's cow boss and was in charge of driving cattle to the Canadian Pacific Railway construction camps.

The Cornwall residence near Ashcroft, 1865.

The summer of 1886 saw a severe drought in the interior of British Columbia and Bayliffe, thinking it was time to start a ranch of his own, set out to find a place with good grass and water. His travels brought him to the Chilcotin plateau, which at that time was still sparsely settled. Bayliffe took a job looking after a pack train for Tom Hance and took his time to check out the country. He spent the winter of 1886 in a little cabin overlooking the Chilcotin River. In the spring he was impressed with the way the Chilcotin River overflowed its banks and naturally irrigated the land. Remembering the dry Cherry Creek summers, he pre-empted a beautiful piece of land between Alexis Creek and Redstone, he went into partnership with another Englishman, Norman Lee.

William Roper of Cherry Creek, [ca. 1890].

To stock his ranch he went to William Roper and made an arrangement that showed the trust that had grown between to the two men. He took 100 yearling heifers with the understanding that, in five years, the partners would return the original 100 plus one half of the increase. These heifers and a few purebred Hereford bulls were driven to the new ranch with the assistance of Shuswap Indians from the Kamloops area, having to swim the Fraser River at the Gang Ranch. As the Shuswaps were afraid of the warlike Chilcotins, they would come no further, so they roped and banded all the heifers there and Bayliffe continued on his own. True to his word, Bayliffe made good his agreement, five years later returning over 200 cows to Roper.

Alkali Lake ranch house, 1914.

In 1891, Bayliffe returned to England and brought back enough funds to purchase Norman Lee's share of the ranch. As well, he brought back a bride, Gertrude Tyndle, a daughter of the editor of The London Times newspaper. Mrs. Bayliffe was a skilled rider, always riding sidesaddle, and regularly helped with round-ups. She also owned two racehorses of her own and entered them in races at Becher's Prairie at Riske Creek.

The Bayliffes never forgot their aristocratic upbringing, always dressing for dinner at a table set with silver and fine china. They were also enthusiastic polo players and organized games among the local settlers. When Hugh Bayliffe died in 1934 his holdings, the 3000 acre Chilanko Ranch, were taken over by his son, Gay. The Chilanko Ranch is still operated by the Bayliffe family.

Many "mud pups" came to learn the ranching business and stayed to make a place for themselves. Among these was Robert Cecil Cotton, who came from Hampton Court, England to the M.G. Drummond Ranch in 1897. After a year and a summer with no pay, he began to work during the winter of 1898 for a grand sum of $25 a month. After learning the trade, Cotton bought the ranch off of Drummond and it became the Cotton Ranch and operated it until his death in 1954. Other "mud pups" in the Chilcotin include Gordon Farwell, who came from Leicestershire, England to the River Ranch of Fred Beaumont in 1903 and Gerald Blenkinsop, who came from Warwickshire in 1907 to work on the Chilco Ranch. All of these men stayed in the Chilcotin and raised families that carried on the tradition of hard work and devotion to the land.

Main house at Chilko Ranch, Cecil Henry in froground, 1937.

At the outset of the railway era, settlement still tended to be concentrated along the major routes of travel. In the Cariboo this meant the Cariboo Wagon Road and, to a lesser extent, the River Trail and the main trail through the Chilcotin through Riske Creek and Hanceville. But, toward the end of the railway era, settlement began to change. Numerous areas were settled where the grasslands were extensive enough to support ranching and side-roads served these settlements. Settlement spread along the accessible bunch grass ranges along the Chilcotin River up until about 1893 when the area all the way to Alexis Creek was settled. In addition to river lots, the early Chilcotin ranchers acquired meadows on the uplands for hay cutting and fall grazing.

The Onward Ranch, 1905.

After the main grasslands were settled, ranches continued to be established in the more remote areas where wild meadows were abundant. In the east Cariboo ranches were established in the Horsefly and Ochiltree areas beginning in 1893 and continuing through the first decades of the Twentieth Century. The Miocene area was not settled until 1908. The first ranches south-east of the Cariboo Road, in areas such as Forest Grove, Buffalo Lake and Canim Lake were established in the years just before World War I. The Big Creek area in the Chilcotin was first settled in 1903 and continued to expand until the beginning of World War I. Chezacut, thirty miles north of Redstone was settled in the summer of 1900 when John Stewart, Ed Sherringham, E.P. Lee, and Fred and Will Copeland established ranches in the natural meadows. The opening up of these new areas for ranching had a positive effect on the existing ranches in the Cariboo that were able to supply cattle to stock the new ranches. It also meant an increase in traffic on the Cariboo Road that went a long way to supporting those roadhouse ranches that were strung along the route north.

Mr. William Anders at his ranch near Alexandria, [ca. 1890].

Settlement in the Chilcotin was greatly enhanced with the beginning of construction of a bridge across the Fraser at Chimney Creek in 1902. Chilcotin residents, who before this had been forced to use the slow boat ferry at the mouth of Chimney Creek or at Soda Creek, had long been lobbying the government for such a bridge. This engineering marvel included a centre span of 325 feet that passed 100 feet above the water. In recognition that livestock would be among the regular traffic on this bridge, stock corrals were constructed at either side of the bridge so that the number of cattle crossing the bridge at any one time would be twenty five. The opening of this bridge in 1904 was a tremendous boost to cattlemen in the Chilcotin who previously had had to swim their cattle across the Fraser. The Chimney Creek Bridge also confirmed Williams Lake as the main supply centre for the Chilcotin because of its location on the main road to the area.

Klondike Cattle Drives

During the winter of 1897-98 news that gold had been discovered in the remote Klondike region of the Canadian north reached the outside world. The cattlemen of the Cariboo-Chilcotin, ever interested in establishing new markets for their beef, greeted the news with interest. The spring of 1898 saw a flurry of activity as a number of ranchers began to assemble herds for the trail north. In fact, as the snows finally disappeared from the shady trails and valleys, there was a scramble to see who would be first on the trail. It was rightly assumed that those who were first to arrive would have the best opportunity to sell their cattle.

The distinction of being the first enterprising cattleman to head his cattle north from the Chilcotin to the Klondike goldfields was Jim Cornell, a native of Tennessee who had established a ranch on Fraser Flats above the Chilcotin River near Riske Creek. He headed north with about a hundred head of cattle in early May of 1898. He was joined by Varish "French Henri, who was born in Ontario and had worked for Billy Pinchbeck, Billy Adams and Bill Robinson. Henri bought 25 head of cattle with his earnings and threw in with Cornell on the long trip north.

Cornell and Henri were closely followed by Jerry Gravelle with another hundred head of cattle, Norman Lee with two hundred head and Johnny Harris with another two hundred head. As might be imagined, there was a keen sense of competition between those in charge of the various drives. Not only was there a push to be first to the good overnighting areas, but also the first herds over the trail rapidly depleted the grazing along the way, leaving little for the ones following. This lack of good forage was further complicated by the mud which was churned up along the trail by the hundreds of gold seekers with horses and mules who were also on the trail.

Round-up near 108 Mile, 1943.

Fortunately we have been left with the diary kept by Norman Lee on his epic cattle drive north, which chronicles the day-to-day routines and hardships on the trail. Lee left his Chilcotin ranch on May 17 with five cowboys, mostly Chilcotin Indians, a "boss packer" with nine packhorses, and a cook. The herd was usually split up with each cowboy driving a band of about thirty or forty head. Several weeks into the drive, Johnny Harris and his herd overtook and passed Lee's, leaving Lee as the last of the four herds heading north.

On August 25th they were at the summit of the mountain range, 260 miles from Hazelton, travelling close to the snow line and crossing innumerable glacier streams, swift and cold. Lee walked on ahead and arrived at Telegraph Creek on September 2nd, ahead of his cattle. He found that Jim Cornell and "French" Henri, who had made better time with their smaller herd, had decided not to go any further. They saw the opportunity to take advantage of the steady flow of hungry men along this trail to the goldfields. Cornell took over a butcher shop previously owned by Dominic Burns, brother of the famous Pat Burns, and sold his fresh beef for 75 cents a pound. Both Cornell and Henri were making a tidy profit for their cattle but the demand for beef was not great enough for Lee to also call a halt to his cattle drive.

The only hope for Harris and Lee was to press on to Teslin, where the cattle were slaughtered and the dressed beef loaded on hastily constructed scows to be rafted over lake and river to Dawson. Harris set off early in October and four days later, Lee and his scows set off with a good breeze blowing them along. After two days of good sailing, a gale blew up and continued to blow for two more days. The continuous beating of the scows on the rocks wrecked one and then the other, leaving the beef lying in the shallow water. There was nothing that could be done. It was too late to construct other scows and there was no one around who was interested in buying the beef. Lee had little choice but to accept defeat and abandon the beef. The fate of Johnny Harris, who had preceded Lee was not much better. Although he had escaped the fateful storm on the lake, his scows had become frozen in about 200 miles above Dawson and his beef, like Lee's, a complete loss.

Norman Lee arrived in Vancouver "with a roll of blankets, a dog and one dollar-the latter I took the first opportunity of exchanging for some refreshments, and made a fresh start with a clean sheet." After borrowing enough to take the train to Ashcroft and borrowing a horse to ride home, Norman Lee started ranching again. By 1902, he was well on the way to prosperity again. The descendants of Norman Lee are still ranching in the Chilcotin.

The Railway Frenzy

After the turn of the century, there was a frenzy of railway construction in British Columbia under the government led by Premier Richard McBride. In 1903, the Grand Trunk, the oldest railway line in Canada, had announced plans to extend its line to the Pacific coast. After considerable negotiation and various charges of corruption, the government announced, early in 1908, that the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway would be constructed in British Columbia from the from the Yellowhead Pass through Fort George and terminating at Prince Rupert. The same year, it was announced that the Canadian Northern Railway would construct a line running from the Yellowhead Pass down the North Thompson River to Kamloops and then paralleling the Canadian Pacific Railway to Vancouver. Both of these railways would need huge work crews to complete the work on time and the crews would have to be fed. The ranchers of the Cariboo-Chilcotin were well-situated to supply cattle to both of these markets.

Pat Burns, the great butcher entrepreneur, secured the contract to supply beef to the Grand Trunk Pacific construction camps in British Columbia. He bought up all the cattle he could obtain and prices rose as the market struggled to keep abreast of the demand for beef to supply the railroad builders. Construction in British Columbia began from both ends at once, from Prince Rupert east and from the Yellowhead Pass west. Most of the cattle for the west end of the line could be sent by the Canadian Pacific Railway from Alberta or the southern interior to Vancouver and then by scow to Prince Rupert and down the Skeena River to the camps. But the construction along the Fraser River in the Rocky Mountain Trench was more difficult. Cattle purchased in the Cariboo were loaded on scows and shipped up the Fraser River to the construction camps. But by 1910, construction began from both ends to connect Fort George to Hazelton. For this stretch of road, cattle had to be driven overland from the Chilcotin.

Burns Meat Market, Revelstoke, 1910.

Burns and Company agents began to purchase large herds of cattle from all over the Cariboo and Chilcotin areas and assemble them at Riske Creek. From there they were driven to the west side of the river at Quesnel and then 500 miles along the old overland telegraph trail to Hazelton. In the first summer alone, over 2000 head of cattle were driven to Hazelton. In the following three years, another 10,000 head of cattle were purchased and driven to the Grand Trunk Pacific construction crews.

Every rancher in the Cariboo-Chilcotin had been given a boost and the cattle industry had become well established. But railway construction was always a temporary market. Until a railway was constructed through the Cariboo, the main access to the permanent coastal and eastern markets was still through Ashcroft. Therefore great enthusiasm greeted the announcement, in 1912, of the construction of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway from Quesnel to Squamish via Lillooet. This railway was intended to unite North Vancouver with the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway at Fort George, providing Cariboo-Chilcotin ranchers with easy access to the coastal markets.

Grand Trunk Pacific Railway construction at Prince Rupert, [ca. 1910].

Unfortunately the construction of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway was fraught with charges of corruption and poor management. By the time the track was laid from Squamish to Clinton in 1917, the entire appropriation of twenty million dollars had been spent. By the early 1920s the line had only been completed to Quesnel and no one could be found to buy the struggling railway. None-the-less, the line provided rail transportation for Cariboo-Chilcotin cattle to the lucrative coastal markets. Even more significant, the Pacific Great Eastern Railway established Williams Lake as its divisional headquarters. Not only did this mean that the town's population was swelled by trackmen, station agents and others but also Williams Lake became the main supply centre for the Cariboo-Chilcotin. Stockyards were constructed and, from that point on, Williams Lake became the destination for shipping cattle from all over the Cariboo-Chilcotin. Even more significant, the Pacific Great Eastern Railway established Williams Lake as its divisional headquarters. The provincial government had purchased the "lower farm" from Bob Borland in 1912 and established a new townsite for Williams Lake. After some deliberation as to whether the name of the new townsite should be Borland, the name Williams Lake was retained. The coming of the railway meant that the new town's population was swelled by trackmen, station agents and others but also Williams Lake became the main supply centre for the Cariboo-Chilcotin. Stockyards were constructed and, from that point on, Williams Lake became the destination for shipping cattle from all over the Cariboo-Chilcotin. After years of watching the traffic on the Cariboo Road bypass Williams Lake in favour of 150 Mile House, there was some justice in watching 150 Mile House become a quiet backwater.

Loading cattle at Williams Lake, 1947.

The same was the fate with the other roadhouses on the Cariboo Road. The string of roadhouses that had served the horse-drawn traffic since the gold rush days, were left without the income from regular travellers on the roads and were forced to look at alternate ways of making a living.

History of Cariboo Ranching
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