Some 85 km southeast of Williams Lake, along the east side of the Fraser River, one can find the site of the gold rush community of Dog Creek. The area has a mild climate with good growing soil, and for centuries it was the wintering place of Indigenous people. There are several explanations for how the name of Dog Creek came about. One is found in an 1862 essay published by a Victoria clergyman which states “At Dog Creek there lived in times past an Indian Chief, a favourite of the Hudson’s Bay Company packers, who gave him the name Le Petit Chiens.”
Another possible source of the name is that when the early fur traders and packers approached the Indigenous settlement large numbers of dogs would charge out, snarling, barking and creating a real racket.
However, the most likely explanation is that the place was known as Dog Creek long before any white men appeared in the area. It was likely the home village of a successful and respected Secwépemc warrior-leader whose name was Sqexe (pronounced Skaha), the Shuswap word for dog.
Long before the gold rush, there was a well-established trail north of Lillooet along the west bank of the Fraser. At Canoe Creek, travellers would cross the river to the east side, where the trail linked several Indigenous settlements. (The name Canoe Creek is likely derived from this crossing point, which was made in canoes.)
The route then proceeded up to the Interior plateau and on to Alkali Lake, then to Springhouse before veering back to the river near Soda Creek. When the Hudson’s Bay Company established Fort Alexandria in 1921, this route became part of the network of fur brigade trails upon which the company relied.
The winters in Dog Creek were so moderate that in the 1840s, a number of Mexican and French HBC packers built cabins and spent time there when they were not working. Eventually, several of them settled permanently. These included Raphael Valenzuela, José Tresierra, Antonio Mondala, Jean Caux (Cataline), and his brother Pierre.
Many of them married First Nations women, and raised families there. When the gold rush enveloped the area in 1859, the settlement of Dog Creek was already fairly well established. It was the first permanent white settlement in the Interior of British Columbia.
Until the early 1860s when the Cariboo Wagon Road was constructed, the river trail from Lillooet up through Dog Creek then east to the goldfields was a common and well-used route. Thousands of gold seekers passed through the area, but very few of them struck it rich. Some of them began to realize the potential for farming and ranching in the areas they had passed through, and in the three valleys of the Dog Creek area, men began to arrive to set up homesteads.
The Harper brothers, Thaddeus and Jerome, were probably the first to realize the possibilities for ranching in the area, taking up land at Dog Creek Mountain and later moving across the Fraser to establish the sprawling Gang Ranch. They were soon followed by more settlers, at first predominantly French, including Pierre Colin (who later changed his name to Peter Collins), the French aristocrat Le Compte de Versepuche (known also as Versepuch Gaspard), and two brothers, Moses and Joseph Pigeon. Gaspard built a large house with a fireplace made of adobe bricks.
He set up the first sawmill in the area, over top of a creek and powered by a waterwheel. The creek powered the saw and carried away the sawdust all in one operation.
In 1861, an American named Charlie Brown arrived. He was a flour miller by trade, and he imported a set of French grinding stones, a drive shaft, and a few other milling components. Fashioning all the rest by hand, he constructed the first flour mill to be built on the British Columbia mainland. It opened in 1866.
It is interesting to note that during the 1860s the little town of Dog Creek was fairly primitive. There was little real money in circulation and the nearest bank was located in Victoria. Residents used cut nails, each one worth a penny, as currency. In return for furs, vegetable, grain or personal services, people would receive a quantity of nails which would be used to pay for purchases at the store or the saloon. Nails were also used for betting in the never-ending card games. This system worked well within the community, but not so well at other settlements, where nails were not recognized as legal tender.
During the 1870s, the population of Dog Creek saw a boom of sorts when Chinese miners discovered pockets of gold in the hard clay banks high above the Fraser River. The wealthier Chinese imported a large number of workers, paying the Canadian government’s $200 head tax for each one. This labour force constructed several miles of ditches from streams and lakes above these gold pockets. Using only picks and shovels, they dug a network to bring water to sluice boxes and rockers wherever an area of pay dirt was discovered.
The influx of these Chinese workers made Dog Creek grow incrementally. The men were housed in the attics of four Chinese houses built to accommodate them. These buildings also housed stores, saloons, gambling rooms, and brothels on their ground floors, all intended to cater to the miners and to liberate them from their wages. The workers received very little pay for their labour, and they were fed only a few handfuls of rice each day. Most of them were never able to repay the head tax, so they could not escape their indentureship to their employers.
A fifth roadhouse, store, and saloon was in operation at this time as well. It was run by a man named Carlyle, and it was frequented by the non-Chinese population.
Located at the foot of the hill where the trail began its 1,500-foot ascent from the Fraser, it was said that one look at the climb to come convinced many travellers of the need for a stiff drink or two before attempting it.
In 1886, Joseph Smith Place, originally from Lancashire, England, arrived in Dog Creek. He purchased Raphael Valenzuela’s 300 acres with the intent of developing a cattle ranch. He added a second storey onto Raphael’s original cabin and set up a lean-to kitchen. This became Dog Creek’s sixth stopping house, store and saloon - the storied Dog Creek House. Smith was a widower, but he married again in 1887. He and his wife Jane had four sons and one daughter. Over the years, the place was enlarged to become a structure with 22 guest rooms. A large new store was also built along with a three-storey barn and livery stable and several outbuildings.
Place also bought out the rival stores and stopping houses as they began to decline. In addition, he acquired the ranch holdings of many of the original white settlers. These he consolidated into the Dog Creek Ranch, which comprised of more than 10,000 acres and 2,000 head of cattle when he passed away in 1924.
By the early 1900s the gold mining era was over and the Chinese had left. All the roadhouses except Dog Creek House had been abandoned. For a time, Dog Creek continued to be an important centre in the Cariboo, a source of supplies for farmers and ranchers with regular stage line service, some logging and lumber mill operations, and the Dog Creek House with its store, saloon, rooms and post office. By the 1930s however, small ranches were disappearing as they were bought up and incorporated into larger operations, and the families that had owned them were moving on. With the improvement of roads and communications the town of Dog Creek declined even further.
Except for a short period following Joseph Place’s death, the Dog Creek House remained in the Place family. Joseph’s son Charles, his wife Ada, and their two sons continued to operate this historic stopping house, and in the 1930s and 40s, it enjoyed a resurgence of sorts as a lodge/retreat for the rich and famous. In 1961, the place was sold to Gerald Weingart. Early in the morning of March 4, 1966, during a howling snowstorm, Dog Creek House burned to the ground, a victim of faulty wiring in the attic.
Today, very little remains of the once thriving community which pre-dated the gold rush. Sawmills, flour mills, pocket mines, individual dwellings, stores, saloons, cafés and roadhouses - all are gone, and only their memories remain.
For this article I relied on the writings of Branwen Patenaude, Irene Stangoe, and the files of the Williams Lake Tribune.