"The Hope Trail Played an important role in the history of British Columbia. Over it have plodded the packtrains of the Hudson's Bay Company, miners with visions of riches and the pioneers who settled in the Okanagan and the Smilkameen Valley..." 1
Bob allows readers and trail-goers to walk with the 4000 gold miners lured by the call of Rock Creek in 1859. The Hope Trail it is listed as Trail 18 in Bob Harris’s Best of BC Hiking Trails, and would have been first among his research interests: it is one of the earliest examples of the Royal Engineers and their contribution to early access to British Columbia communities.
After sixty horses died during a
fall crossing, Governor James Douglas decided to redirect the route from the
North Cascades from Hope to Princeton. Colonel Moody of the Royal Engineers, among the first four RE
divisions to arrive in Canada, received the commission; in 1860, Sergeant
William McColl made the cut. Edgar Dewdney provided the brawn, and due to his
labors the Dewdney Trunk trail received its name. Dewdney is also a common
eponym for landmarks in the City of Maple Ridge.
"Here Captain Grant located the high trail on the south side of the valley, but the north-facing ravines and sidehills stayed choked with snow until too late in the year." 3
The "old Dewdney trail, or Canyon trail" is still in use, but a second trail was cut in 1861 by Captain Grant and Sergeant McColl up the Skagit Bluff river valley; near 37 Mile Creek, the crossing proved to be too treacherous. In 1864 John Allison rebuilt this "zig zag" into the valley; his trail improvements, Captain Grant's route, and the Dewdney trail are all included on the above trail map.
"Here Captain Grant located the high trail on the south side of the valley, but the north-facing ravines and sidehills stayed choked with snow until too late in the year." 3
The "old Dewdney trail, or Canyon trail" is still in use, but a second trail was cut in 1861 by Captain Grant and Sergeant McColl up the Skagit Bluff river valley; near 37 Mile Creek, the crossing proved to be too treacherous. In 1864 John Allison rebuilt this "zig zag" into the valley; his trail improvements, Captain Grant's route, and the Dewdney trail are all included on the above trail map.
1 Bob Harris, "The Hope Trail North of the Skagit River," Best of BC's Hiking Trails: Twenty Great Hikes (MacLean Hunter, 1986), 99. ↩
2 Harris describing Hope Pass, "Hope Trail North of the Skagit River," 104.↩
3 Ibid., 102.↩
