Fraser Canyon
The Fraser Canyon is a stretch of the Fraser River where it descends rapidly through narrow rock gorges in the Coast Mountains enroute from the interior plateau of British Columbia to the Fraser Valley.
The Canyon was formed during the Miocene period (23.7-5.3 million years ago) by the river cutting into the uplifting interior plateau. At the mouth of the Canyon, an archeological site documents the presence of the Stó:lō people in the area from the early Holocene period, 8,000 to 10,000 years ago after the retreat of the Fraser Glacier. An archaeological dig farther upriver at Keatley Creek, near Pavilion, is dated to 8000 BP and dates from a time when a huge lake filled what is now the canyon above Lillooet, created by a slide a few miles south of the present-day town.
Extending 270 km north of Yale to the confluence of the Chilcotin River, its southern stretch is a major transportation corridor to the interior, with the Canadian National and Canadian Pacific Railways and the Trans Canada Highway carved out of its rock faces. North of Lytton, it is followed by BC Highway 12, then from Lillooet to Pavilion by BC Hwy 99 (the farther end of the Sea-to-Sky Highway, though not carrying that name in this area). The BCR line follows the same stretch of canyon from Lillooet to just beyond Pavilion. Between there and the mouth of the Chilcotin River there are only rough ranching roads and the terrain is a mix of canyon depths flanked by arid benchland and high plateau. Between Pavilion and Lillooet, the river's gorge is at its maximum depth, with the river throttled through a series of narrow gorges flanked by high cliffs.
At Hell's Gate, near Boston Bar, the canyon walls rise about 1000 m above the rapids. Fish ladders along the river's side permit migrating salmon to bypass a rockslide that diverted the river during the blasting of the CNR line in 1905. At Siska, a few minutes south of Lytton, there is a spectacular double rail bridge, with the continental mainlines switching sides of the river at the throat of a rocky gorge.
Just north of Lillooet, narrow rock ledges choke the river just at the confluence of the lower canyon of the Bridge River, forming an obstacle to migrating fish that has made this spot the busiest aboriginal fishing site on the river, from ancient times to the present.
The history of the canyon is particularly rich, especially from Pavilion south to Yale. 10,500 miners and an untold number of hangers-on populated its banks and towns during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush of 1858-60, during which it was the setting for the bloody but largely-unknown Fraser Canyon War and the opera buffa farce of a series of events known as McGowan's War. Details of these events can be found under their respective titles and other historical material in the pages on the towns named in this article. Other important histories connected with the Canyon include the building of the Cariboo Wagon Road and the construction of the CPR.
There are other canyons on the Fraser that are not considered part of the Canyon, notably at Soda Creek, between Williams Lake and Prince George. The official Grand Canyon of the Fraser is in the river's upper stretch through the Rocky Mountain Trench, between Prince George, but despite its name it has neither the roughness of water nor the depth and severity of canyon as is found in the area of Lillooet or between Boston Bar and Yale.
Colloquially, the term "Fraser Canyon" is often used to include the Thompson Canyon from Lytton to Ashcroft, as they form the same highway route which most people are familiar with.