Peace River Regional District - History

History

Westward expansion during the With 18th and 19th centuries pushed First Nation groups westward and into competition with each other for resources. The Algonkian-speaking Cree had pushed the Athapaskan-speaking Dunneza into the BC portion of the Peace River Country which pushed the fellow Athapaskan-speaking Sekani into the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and beyond. European-Canadian explorers penetrated the area during the 19th–century by canoeing allow the Peace River and establishing trading posts at Fort St. John and Hudson's Hope. In 1883 the province gave the federal government control over 3,500,000 acres (14,200 km2) of land, anywhere north the Rocky Mountains, as part of a deal to extend a rail line to Vancouver. After settling land claims with Treaty 8 First Nations, creating the East Moberly Reserve, West Moberly Reserve, Halfway River Reserve, and the St. John Reserve, the government surveyed out its land as the Peace River Block in 1907 and opened it to homesteading in 1912. Pioneer Hector Tremblay, and a few others, helped cut trails and opened stores and lodges to help in-coming settlers. The first community of these settlers was established at Pouce Coupe, around Tremblay's cabin. The land was granted back to the province in 1930 after conflicts regarding the water and mineral rights emerged.

The region grew slowly as agricultural settlements spread westward to the foothills of the Rocky Mountains and northward to the muskegs of the Liard. In 1932 Pouce Coupe became the first community in the region to incorporate as a village, followed by Dawson Creek in 1936 after a rail line was extended there from Alberta. The 1941 Canadian Census recorded 8,444 people in northeastern BC but a year later the Alaska Highway was constructed by 10,000 US Army servicemen connecting Dawson Creek to Alaska via Fort Nelson. After the war and turning the highway over the province, the highway made it much easier to transport resources and agricultural products to rail lines and left Dawson Creek with 14-fold increase, and northeastern BC with a 2.5-fold increase, in population by 1956. Industrial development began with the provincially funded megaprojects which included the extension of transportation and utility infrastructure through the Rocky Mountains to Chetwynd and across the region and the construction of two hydroelectric dams at Hudson's Hope. An oil and gas industry developed and helped Fort St. John's population increase from 3,619 people in 1961 to 13,891 in 1981 surpassing Dawson Creek as the largest city. The last municipality in the region to incorporate was Tumbler Ridge which was built by the province in 1981 as an instant community to service two proposed coal mines. The region experienced little growth in the late-1980s and the population remained between 55,000 and 59,000 between 1992 and 2003. Since then, with a booming oil and gas industry, the population has gained over 5,500 people in three years.