Chilcotin Ranges - History of The Southern Chilcotin Mountains

History of The Southern Chilcotin Mountains

This region is commonly (but incorrectly) known as the "South Chilcotin" and is the object of a protracted quarrel between preservationist movements and resource extraction proposals since the 1930s. A provincial park was established in the 1990s but was downgraded in 2007 to the Spruce Lake Protected Area has been established, but its political status is uncertain and the area preserved is greatly reduced from the original proposals to protect it, which began in the 1930s during the heyday of the Bridge River goldfield towns just to the south.

Historically this region was the hunting territory of Chief Hunter Jack of the Lakes Lillooet, whose big-game hunting business shared the region with hunters of the Tsilhqot'in people. The shared use of the area north of the Bridge River and Gun Creek was part of the settlement of an early-19th-century peace which had ended a long and bloody war between Hunter Jack's people and the Tsilhqot'in. Trails from the Bridge River Country led over the many ranges of the region to Taseko Lake and Chilko Lake in the Chilcotin Country, and also east across the Camelsfoot Range to the Fraser River near Big Bar.

Though no mines have ever been found in the proposed protected area, other than a few marginal ones in the vicinity of Eldorado Mountain, the south flank of Big Dog Mountain at the northwest end of the Shulaps Range was the site of a major gold excitement in 1941, connected with the interests who then owned the Bralorne-Pioneer Mine mines nearby. Physically daunting efforts to reach the alpine-elevation mine site over the Shulaps Range in order to preserve rights to the claim in the allotted time period almost destroyed the large pack-train, but the papers got filed. Those claims were shuffled aside during World War II but remained on the map and are currently under exploitation as the Blue Creek Mine. Other large mine prospects in the area include copper diggings covering the slopes of Red Mountain, the highest in the Camelsfoot Range just north of the Blue Creek Mine.

The area's unique and distinct landscape and ecology, so different even from the rest of the Chilcotin Ranges or the rest of the Bridge River Country, is what made it stand out amid a region already wild and extremely beautiful and why it's a long-term candidate for protection. The neighbouring Dickson, Shulaps and Bendor Ranges are all unprotected and have been or are being heavily logged, except for special preserves in alpine areas of the Shulaps and in its neighbour to the east, the Camelsfoot Range.

Many on the environmentalist side hope that the creation of Ts'ilos and Big Creek Provincial Park will help shore up the protection of the Spruce Lake Protected Area. Hunting guide Ted (Chilco) Choate of Gaspard Lake, on the Chilcotin Plateau just northeast of the Spruce Lake Protected Area has joined in the call to combine all these three parks, plus the Churn Creek Protected Area to their northeast, plus some of the surrounding country and the deep, much higher heart of the Pacific Ranges into a National Park. Industry and government remain committed to shared use and sustainable planning.