Spence's Bridge

[Music] cool trails and ghost town share the adventures of our early pioneers as we explore the development of the Pacific Northwest and beyond with your host Mike Roberts and historian bill Varley [Music] welcome to gold trails and ghost towns Mike Roberts with bill barley our resident storyteller historian and host and you might have guessed this something sitting on my lap here I love maps and this particular map is a treasure in its own right who was the cartographer in this case bill photographer is Georges Mercer Dawson completed the map in 1895 almost a century ago Mike and it shows what I consider one of the finest parts of British Columbia no doubt about it and if you started Kamloops with most people who work am obsessed and go down Kamloops lake we're not talking about the north thompson or the south thompson wherever we're talking about the Maine Thompson Maine Thompson starts at Savannah and goes down past dead man's Bend past the bone apart past some old Indian villages down here and you go all the way downriver to a little place called Spencer's bridge mm-hmm then you go past through nikuman and then right down to Lipton where the Thompson runs into the Fraser and this is really the arid country the Thompson of course was named after David Thompson who was also a magnificent cartographer one of the great map makers who preceded Dawson and Thompson interesting enough the Indians called him cuckoo scent which means man who watches Stars and looks at stars and he was a Northwest company Explorer and also a Northwest company map maker he had never been on this particular River but but because he was so gifted they named the river after him Thompson never was on the Thompson River no and this Thompson River Mike is is really the era this is the desert country of British Columbia in many respects its up not what we call the northern part of the great American desert so this is a river and a blue cutting through the desert country this is really the Old West when I take a look at this map the work that Dawson and McEvoy and his various people that he had working under him did I could take that map and as I take a look at the gradations and the shading and everything this map takes me right to the spot the country just sort of comes out of this map remarkable despite a physical infirmity he crawled all these hills he did a marvelous job and this map in a sense remake is virtually unchanged okay coming back to the ribbon of blue in the desert the main Thompson River between Kamloops lake and the Fraser River will do that story and some of places there right after these words [Music] welcome back to gold trails and ghost towns Mike Roberts with bill barley we're talking about the Thompson River country from Revere Kamloops Lake down to the literary and we'll get more specific as time goes by but I'm amazed at the population prior to any white arrival of Indian people in this area yeah really quite remarkable of course this was a great fishing River you know the salmon came up the Fraser and then went up to Thompson and went up farther up the Thompson South Thompson specifically up towards the Adams Adams Lake area and this was this was area they could make us they could make their living quite easily Mike and and they were very powerful and here here this particular photograph indicates two of the Thompson Warriors around probably the 1880 s in full regalia and they were they were very truculent didn't like the whites especially at that time certainly after the whites had a ride and here's another shot that I think is very indicative this is a shot of an Indian burial on the Fraser River itself very close to the Thompson of course and it shows a burial of a small child and all the treasured items this child would have carried into the land beyond the land of shades there's a pair of scissors in here yes and these are all the things that were that person's possession here and this and even today you can go along various of the old Indian camp sites on the Thompson River and you will find lots of artifacts from from those years hundreds and hundreds of years ago and of course Lena Shaw Shaw Springs had thousands of artifacts I picked up hundreds of artifacts on both the South Thompson and the MainTop so these are some arrowheads these are arrowheads that you picked up on the Thompson on the Thompson yeah and the South Thompson these looks I mean so perfect as to be you know sir replicas but these are the real McCoy yeah they were very artisan so they picked different types of stone to work with obsidian sometimes in a church and a basalt and various other types of and and really had very very severe cutting edge you know these are these are still sharp oh sure they would these have just been lost in the hunt they're washed up on shore because they look good enough they usually washed up below the Indian village the river works over that sand and brings them up because they're flat brings them up to the shore and people wanna hunt them yeah so you know it's really quite an interesting area and and in Spencer's bridge itself of course there was one of the famous individuals interpreters of Indian history James Tate and James Tate is well known to to individuals all across North America he was the individual who spoke four or five different different Indian languages the Indians called him good-looking they thought he was good lucky and here's a picture of James Tate with one of his Indian wives and they would have indicated in High Plains language something like this which means nice face and he indeed has a nice face that's how they would have described to you indeed how come I liked him and not the other European white arrivals well Tate really was the individual who faded him with the Indian society he lived with some Indian women he was married to several different and he spoke their language is extremely well he was fascinated by their customs so so Tate was one of theirs they really assumed he was one of them did he act in any way as an intermediary between the other White's that arrived or yes he softened that transition of course but but in the transition by the way really started probably in 1852 52 to 55 it's debatable whether the four where the first gold was found it was probably founded in the Komen some people will say it was found at Ronquillo Creek both in the same area by the way Mike and so we'll say the early 1800 and 50s and small groups of white miners mostly from Washington Territory California and Oregon started drifting into the across the British line and up the Fraser River or through the Okanagan root and into the into the Thompson area and there they and by the way they ran the gauntlet in Washington territory in the 1800 and about 1858 when the gun yeah they ran the gauntlet Kamiya can they have the frontier was ablaze and Kamiya ken was a great chief he was resisting Lee the white invasion of traditional Indian territory and really quite quite fascinating well they came onto the came onto the Frazer somewhat straight up the Frazer Mike and some branched off towards the east up the Thompson and they thought they were on the right river there were nuggets on the Thompson around dead man's band and so on up to two ounces in weight very very coarse gold in certain parts of the Thompson which is quite interesting but by 1860 the Magnificent diggings and the caribou country have been discovered Mike and they drift off the river but here you see a shot that that indicates what was probably took place in that particular area here so here's a rocker right on the river well placed because the big boulders are there for the big boulders start stacking up usually the gold is coarser so you go just under the back of those boulders that's where you're finding em stuff that's correct and so this is what happened and after they drifted the main the main body of white miners went into the caribou a few Chinese a few Indians stayed right on the river but that was only really the first phase because I guess this area I mean miners are like this placer miners especially let me even find gold but if somebody says there's more gold somewhere else they'll leave what they have to try and find something else no doubt about it Mike and what happened of course is they had to have a road into the diggings the first caribou road wasn't the right road so now they starts constructing a second road from old Yale and they go up to Litton and then they branch up the up the main Thompson and as they branch up the main time soon they have to cross over to the north bank and there they establish a place called Cook's Ferry Cook was the original individual who settled there and has a ferry going across the river transporting men and equipment and goods north so they can get into the caribou this is replaced by the way you can see this this particular shot of some of the equipment ready to go across over but cooks ferry is replaced by a guy who comes in and his name is john spence he builds a bridge there and here's John Spence's bridge taken by dally probably in 1867 and here's John Spencer's bridge and it's quickly shortened from john Spence's Bridge dispenses bridge now this looked like a huge structure I mean it had to cross a major river it had to and it had several spans involved in it and it must have cost a fair buck how did he manage to do this well of course you know he was a toll bridge you see and his first toll keeper was a guy called John Murray and invariably his strange quirk of fate but most of the toll keepers did very very well perhaps they were poor accounting or perhaps they kept a portion of it I'm not about to say to what what Murray did but I do know that he did extremely well and on on that road of course there were numerous other places there was 80 mile house which was a which was 80 miles up from Yale so that's why it was called 80 mile house and the Carroll road looked like this and we've used this shot once before Mike and I think it's one of the great shots of the old here's here's a wagon coming through and they're coming through a place which a lot of people know as great bluff but originally it was called Hell's Gate I thought Hell's Gate was the canyon on the Fraser River where it was so turbulent and that is a Hell's Gate but this is the first Hell's Gate that one was the second Hell's Gate so this was Hell's Gate to the caribou Road or something yeah way to put it sure they thought it was hell up there did they well it was it was it was barren country you make one slip here down into eternity or in the river hundreds and hundreds of feet below and this was the lifeline in dispenses bridge and what happens in spencer's bridge is rather interesting when the caribou road comes through they start to set the hotels start to spring up you know there's a Spence's bridge a hotel and there's Murray's hotel and and there's the Hermitage by the way here's here's a marvelous shot of the Hermitage stagecoach stopping in front of the Hermitage and on its way probably it looks like it's on its way downriver along the old caribou it's basically a Waystation this is a stop along the caribou road where you take on more provisions the horses get a chance to rest and it just happened to be one of the bigger spots yeah and at this time probably this is a shot probably taken about the eighteen hundred and eighty s Mike and they're shooting from across the south side of the river across in dispensers bridge and you can see half a dozen buildings there and of course they had a they had several hotels as I mentioned they had a drug store they had a number of other places business you've got a drug store thing here look at this is I'll put my arrow heads down and pick up my drugstore material look w/e McCarthy and bro chemists and druggists Yale and Spencers bridge so it actually got preserved in glass at least yeah very few of those bottles make I think for NBC I happen to have one got it off an old very old dear friend of mine costs August and Claire Milliken when we've mentioned before in the program and really when they came in they probably came in when the next great Saviour of the economy of Spencer's bridge came in and the railroad started coming in in 1884 so always the real sure preceded by the Chinese who are the work gangs on the railroad and and around a donk and all all the bosses and they were driving up the canyon and the railroad comes in this of course is the mighty CPR later to be followed by the CNR and the railroad adds a few more hotels because some people are working in Spencer's Bridge and Spencers bridge does fairly well for a few years but then something else happens Mike and this is a catastrophe it's the great avalanche of August the 13th 1905 an avalanche you usually think of as being snow oriented but this is a huge landslide this is a landslide almost without equal I would think in the in the history of the Fraser River country with one possible exception and what happened was this here's a picture of Murray Creek Murray this is the same guy who was the toll bridge operator yeah this is the guy who owned most of most of Spencer's bridge at that particular time he's got a creek name now yeah right they named the creek after the creek is responsible for the catastrophe and here you look at the creek here the Falls of Murray Creek Falls coming over down at the bottom the Falls are two individuals now what happened there's a lot of great volume of water pouring through these Falls and it starts down to cut the mountain now down unsuspecting down in Spencer's bridge it's a Sunday people are going about their Sunday it's a day of rest they're not too concerned some are going swimming some are going for a walk and so on on the far side of the river on the south side the Indians most of them have gone to church and rather interesting aside here because the two Smith kids kids are the widow Smith and they may jump on their horse they're gonna go down to the river they've gone down to the river a hundreds of times on this horse so they jump on the horse and the horse is very very steady and he he starts getting down towards the river and seven he puts on the brakes and starts backing up they're amazed they look for a snake no rattlesnake there so they wonder and they try to urge the horse on the horse isn't going anywhere then they are horrific roar and the whole mountain just collapses comes right across the river blocks off the Thompson goes across into the Indian village most of the people weren't there kills 18 Indians immediately and injures probably several dozen more who are just able to get out of the way most of them in church of course do survive and this is a catastrophe of magnificent proportions so this of this obviously blocks the Thompson River for how long a time blocks the Thompson for four hours it starts to back up and starts actually to threaten both the Indian village and Spencer's bridge itself but it finally it finds it as an out rat and it breaks through so this is this kind of a forerunner an indicator foreshadowing of what is happening because it starts this town now starts to decline slightly just because of the sort of the specter of this disaster yeah along with other economic pressures linked oh what a fortunate thing God's intervention I guess in some way in getting the native community in the church yeah okay take a break here come back in just a second and there is more to know about spence's bridge in this area and we'll do that right after we come back from these words [Music] welcome back to gold trails in ghost town sold spence's bridge just narrowly avoids disaster but it can't avoid just a lack of interest anymore yeah the decline the railroads still running by Mike it's still a whistle-stop but not a lot of people are making a good living some of the whites try to go to or cheating or try their hand at ranching the Indians fall back on on the river generally and they start they start going prospecting again to make a stake and this this particular photograph is very interesting here in the right hand side of the photograph you'll see the Thompson coming under that bridge in the right hand side this is where it joins joins the Frazer right at little the Indians are down there with five or six different rocker boxes and the whole family goes down there their prospecting the kids take part in it and they do quite well the Indian prospectors and and placer gold miners of that era are good placer gold miners and the next photograph I think this is the this is the family shot it's a great picture it's a marvelous picture very very clear and they're on they're on their way prospecting and they're probably doing both survey the gold pan the old trusty gold panners is there right at the right hand side and they're on their way there prospecting for placer gold or their prospecting for copper gold or silver lode and this is so the families their gain father some of the kids everybody's there and they're out on their own so the white men may come and go but the native people who called that area home for the millennium are still there and they've picked up a little on the European pastime you bet in there good prospectors now this industrial-strength looking chisel is associated with a with an interesting story what do you use a tool like this well that's a bridge a bridge shaping tool it shapes the Timbers on a bridge it's called a slick and they would have undoubtedly used this on Spencer's bridge which reminded me of a story my Connecticut's the story worth relating Spencer's bridge like all those toll bridges they were used a lot especially when when the caribou Road was busy and they had to once in a while take off the top timbering that is they get worn down and you ride a few more yeah I left only the stringers on the bridge and the stringers were fairly wide but you know something you didn't we had to be very careful and well one night they they've taken all these hadn't blocked off the bridge so only the stringers are left these are the ones that go lengthwise these are the ones they go across the river all right playing one overtop of them maybe one yeah maybe two feet wide maybe and so an unsuspecting mule driver comes up from the south he goes through the Indian village nobody tells him anything nobody knows it's late at night it's a pitch black night the Mules know their way so he's just following the news hanging onto the line you know and he's going across it comes to the bridge in here the water going and he's going across the bridge and he he goes right across to the other side he goes to one of the hotel sits down and has a drink when the guy says where'd you come from the caribou no no you should say K had just came out from Litton what do you mean how do you come up from Litton the guy says is everybody leans forward the guy's just across the bridge what do you think you cross the bridge oh let's note there no planks on the bridge and the guy goes white as a sheet you're kidding me you thought they were pulling his leg they grab a lantern light up the lantern go down to the bridge and they're the only the stringers I wouldn't have done that in the daytime he said so the Mules of course being sure sure footed went right across that bridge he follows him dead across the bridge on the stringer and that's a long bridge and look and remembering that shot it's 30 feet in the air oh yeah he's dead man if he goes down certainly in the pitch black he'd go down he'd stay down and oh what a wonderful story to be recollected by what did you call this tool that's a slick a slick yeah and it just basically takes around beans and makes them flat for that purpose yeah you've got another story which I've got another back into the 50s yeah this is a neat story and it's associated as a matter of fact with this gold piece yes Mike we go back to 1957 which is a few years ago and Oh some some time ago months and months ago I was discussing the spence's bridge country with a guy called Walter cook on their lives on suyus Walter says I have an interesting story and an interesting story it is Mike in 1957 Dawson wait which is a big construction company in British Columbia is working on the trans-canada highway near nikuman and that's probably where the original discovery took place and this photograph we see now is nikuman as it appeared in the early years this is where this story takes shape so he's standing there with a bunch of other men and they're watching the the cat's at work the bulldoze and the scrapers and everything else and one of the big scrapers comes down this partly finished road and he takes a big gouge out of a big cut out of the bank and he starts to pull away and they see something white cascading down the bank and what comes down the bank looks like a skull one of the workers runs out he grabs this and it is a skull completely bleached and he looks at it and then Walter Walter cook he looks at the bank and he sees a glint of what he thinks is gold in the bank he runs up and he pulls out a gold coin a big twenty dollar gold piece he looks at the date and he thinks it was 1850 s which really makes the the story this is very important very important and so what happens is Cooke puts the gold coin in his pocket after looking at it the other guy looks at the skull notice there's a big crease in the skull a dent probably the the reason for this individuals demise and one of the bosses comes down guy called George Richardson he looks at the skull says that looks interesting he said can you mind if I have that skull of guy says no go ahead gives it to Richardson Richardson eventually sends it to the UBC University of British Columbia and they send back a report and I think the report indicated and Cooke can't remember precisely but this is the skull of a white man who was indeed killed by a blow to the head and the reason it was a white man because the teeth were not worn down as the Indian teeth of that era were from chewing leather and so on so white man was killed blow to the head and they interred him with some gold coins whether there was one whether there were a number we don't know whether it was a white trader coming on the way through we'll never know because all of these all the evidence is now part of the base of this trans canada highway under the trans-canada highway but this isn't the end of the story and as they as they filled in on the TransCanada hobby a lot of the gravels spilled over into the Thompson River and an Indian drifts up and he comes up his name is Adams that's all I can remember he's deceased now he comes up melittin he's an old prospector and a good prospector he looks over this scene for a while he says hmm that's interesting and he goes down below a wall they just constructed well there's a bit of a back Eddy Mike he starts panning down there he stays at it every day Saturdays and Sundays day in and day out continually he fills up pill bottles full of a lot of a course gold and remember there is course gold in this area there was Nuggets up to two ounces a lot of course gold came out of the nikuman originally and so he fills up Polk's full of gold pill bottles full of gold these guys the construction guys catch on they start going up the bank and they start panning gold and they do quite well too so really this area may indeed Mike have a high run I'm inclined to think it is I think there's a high run somewhere around old nikuman Creek now would this the fact that there was gold found in conjunction with a human with him with a caucasian European body that would indicate that it wasn't robbery that was the motivation for his demise what would have been the reason for that guy's demise any observations well I think he was trespassing on Thomson territory they didn't like the whites in that area and they decided to get rid of one and they probably got rid of more than one that may have been eighteen hundred and fifty nine or eighteen hundred and fifty-eight when there were a lot of troubles on the Thompson and on the Fraser but now in 1957 these guys I mean the road crew and the Indian prospector ball find it are you indicating that you think that there's still a high run and that the gold hasn't been pulled out of there you can still go along the Thompson River and feel good prospector Mike you can still find fairly cursed gold and various parts of the Thompson yeah because the Thompson is not famous for its gold right the Frazer bars and then at the Thompson certainly secondary I think the Thompson today is a better River for panning than the Fraser is today not as much attention to it more chance to find a high run I mean now when I talk about a high run do you looking now up a hundred feet from the river or what do what are you doing might be 300 feet from the river might be thirty feet from the river Mike very hard to tell lots of bedrock should be looked at so there could be a treasure story yet on the Thompson River we've been looking at that area of the Thompson from Savan ah just at the western end of Kamloops Lake down to Litton mentioning a couple of places like Spencer's bridge and they thank you for joining us today we'll be back again next time with more gold trails and ghost town stories [Music]

Channel: Leslie Dycke

Views: 12,764

Keywords: Bill Barlee, British Columbia, gold, mining

Id: 4MzZdOHke7I

Length: 23min 46sec (1426 seconds)

Published: Sat May 18 2019