... along came Simon Fraser.
The first white men in the area were traders and explorers like Simon Fraser who visited in 1808 while looking for a trade route to the Pacific.
His expedition, travelling down the river that now bears his name, stopped at the mouth of its greatest tributary which he named the Thompson River after his friend and fellow explorer, David Thompson. While here, his party was greeted warmly and with great ceremony by the local First Nations.
... and then the gold rush
The next significant influx was the gold seekers, spurred on by the discoveries in many creeks that fed the two major systems. The first major find was in 1858 at the Nicomen River, just ten miles north of Lytton.
These newcomers were not welcomed but, through sheer weight of numbers and persistence, they eventually dominated the land and its resources.
This tremendous surge inland for gold and other precious minerals created the need for a transportation route to carry supplies into, and wealth out from, the interior of this vast and rugged territory which would eventually become British Columbia.
There had always been a trail down the Fraser, allowing the First Nations to freely trade with the peoples down river, but it was so narrow in places that it was just a toehold where one grasped cracks in the rocks while shuffling across sheer cliff faces.
In 1860, on orders from the territorial government, the British Army’s Royal Engineers built a mule trail through this awesome Fraser Canyon. It took only four months to complete and as soon as it was finished it was a continuous line of movement.
Mules, horses, First Nations packers and, for a short time, even twenty-three camels carried the burdens of the gold fields back and forth in a steady stream.
The trail, although an unquestionable success, was obsolete on its completion. After long, hard consideration a momentous decision was reached: the wagon road had to be extended from Yale to Lytton.
... we needed a road
In 1862 the Royal Engineers set out to build this road, which, for a colony the size of British Columbia, was a huge undertaking requiring enormous expenditures and the utmost in technological planning, and it had to be accomplished with picks, shovels, wheelbarrows, and sheer manpower.
.... we get a name
Just prior to all this activity, our community, which was now being referred to as the Forks, was considered to have grown large enough to be given a proper name.
The population numbered over four thousand, but most were transient adventurers living in tents and clapboard shacks while looking to make their fortunes in the gold claims.
In 1858, without much ceremony and no consultation, Sir James Douglas, territorial governor of the colony of British Columbia, chose the name Lytton in honour of the British Colonial Secretary, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, whose other great accomplishment in life was to write a novel which opened with the words “It was a dark and stormy night”.
By 1863 the Engineers had finished their task and reached the newly designed town of Lytton. While here, as a service to the community, they surveyed out the town-site with parallel streets of one “ chain” width, 66 feet (20 metres). The Government of the day was justly proud of its new, modern wagon road but pride wasn’t going to pay for it… the toll was. All who travelled it paid one shilling per fifty pounds (22.7 kg) of freight, packs under thirty pounds (13.6 kg) were free.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before the adventurers discovered that wealth wasn’t going to leap at them from the ground and most of them moved elsewhere looking for the motherlode.
Lytton was left with a population of about a thousand, half of whom were the hard-working Chinese placer miners who toiled on the sand bars of the Fraser River. The rows of neatly piled rocks can still be seen along the banks of the river as evidence of their industry and organization.
The gold was there… and is still there now, but it has to be painstakingly pried from the river’s grasp as anyone who knows how to use a pan or rocker will tell you.
...the railway arrives
For a few years the boom town that was Lytton faltered as the many services that had begun for the gold rush competed for the little remaining business. But the hard times weren’t going to last.
Canada was a country to be created and part of the contract was to build a railroad from sea to shining sea. In the early 1870’s the surveyors went through, much to everyone’s excitement, but it would be another ten years before the incredible financial and human resources could be gathered… it would take $90,000 a mile (1.6 km) and ten thousand men to complete the job. The majority of the labourers were imported from California and China. The population of British Columbia was only 35,000.
Lytton’s second great boom had arrived and things would never be the same again, because even after the years of arduous construction were over, and the Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) was built, rail yards, stations, section crews and, most of all, the country’s predominant transportation link through the heart of the community, remained.
The decade ending the nineteenth century and the one beginning the twentieth were relatively quiet ones for this community. Lytton had settled down to exploiting the new traffic from the railroad and providing services to the ranches and mines that were springing up in the surrounding areas.
The boom had gone again but the respite was well used. The community was developing strength and an identity. Many of the people who had come for the booms had seen something more and stayed to become the founding fathers. There were second and third generation Lyttonites now occupying the schools. It was a maturing process and one that was needed not just to recover from the roaring past, but to prepare for the next great onslaught. Another railway was on the way.
...another railway arrives
By 1910 construction of the Canadian National Railroad (CNR) arrived in Lytton.
Technology had advanced little since the building of the CPR, thirty years before, and the second railroad didn’t have the advantage of selecting from a choice of routes, so another incredibly difficult and expensive project challenged the Fraser Canyon.
The people of Lytton were overjoyed. Immediately the outskirts of the village were crowded with tents and shacks to house the four to five thousand railroad builders. The existing businesses in the community thrived and cafes and saloons sprang up everywhere to handle the overflow. The prosperity was compounded by the building of the Pacific Great Eastern (PGE) by another route into the north country, through the neighbouring village of Lillooet. The cheapest and quickest way of getting supplies to this construction was by rail to Lytton and by freight wagon to Lillooet.
These were probably Lytton’s greatest days: substantial buildings were going up on every corner, an impressive array of services were being offered to travellers and residents alike, culture and the arts were being displayed and supported by the community… Lytton had become the centre of the region and it set about looking and acting the part. The construction boom peaked in 1914 and from there it was a gradual decline for the rest of the decade and a levelling off during the 1920’s.
...Lytton in flames
The thirties and forties were Lytton’s leanest years.
The history of the community is one punctuated with fire. These two decades were, overwhelmingly, the era of the flames. The first blaze in 1931 destroyed twenty-eight buildings in the core of the village leaving just a shadow of the business section and only one of the great hotels. In the same year a new cannery and sawmill complex was built just north of the village and, after only one year of operation, it too burned down. In 1937 the remaining major hotel was destroyed by fire.
These were hard times all over the world and little money was available for reconstruction and new growth. After each great fire there was a consolidation of what was left or a rebuilding at a smaller size. Many people who lost businesses either left town or went to work for others. It was a sad time for the community and it continued through a series of disastrous fires in the late forties which burnt down, among many other buildings, Lytton’s two largest stores.
...the Trans Canada is built
The building of the Trans Canada Highway through the Fraser Canyon spurred on the village in the late fifties and early sixties.
The technology of construction had changed immeasurably since the railroad days. Bulldozers, scrapers, graders, ukes and rock drills were in operation at every turn; carpenters, masons and labourers built massive retaining walls while rock drillers bored great tunnels behind sheer cliff faces.
It wasn’t as labour-intensive as the old railroad construction but it took longer and provided Lytton with another prosperous decade.
...and here we are today
Since the last boom period Lytton has survived as a service centre for local residents and the travelling public, with logging and sawmill operations providing extra stability to our economy.
A cogeneration electrical plant is expected to be in place in late 1998. This state-of-the-art operation is a prime example of industrial co-operation. While the plant’s primary purpose is to provide a source of electrical power, it will reduce the emissions from the sawmill through improved combustion of wood waste, while providing steam for drying wood products at the mill site.
Recently the thrills of whitewater rafting have proven to be a major international attraction, bringing more than twenty thousand visitors just to the Lytton based operations each year.
With a growing interest in eco-tourism, Lytton holds a unique position. Close enough to the major centres of Seattle, the Lower Mainland and the Okanagan to be an easy day trip, Lytton is truly on the edge of the wilderness experience.
It is common to see Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep at the entrance to Botanie Valley, while marmots, deer, osprey and black bear are common sights throughout the area. Other wildlife the close observer might view within minutes of the village would include elk, moose, cougar, bobcat, grizzly bear, coyote and bald eagle.
The Stein-N’laka’pamux Park is just minutes from the village, and provides a beautiful hiking experience.
Now that you are here, be prepared to enjoy our famous rivers, rugged snowcapped peaks, and the best year-round climate in Canada. We, the residents of the Village of Lytton, wish that your stay will be a happy one.