page_title: Canadian canoe routes
section_title: Pacific coast
hierarchical_section_title: Canadian canoe routes / Pacific coast
caption_attribution_description: Map of the route of the York Factory Express. I, Pfly, created it. Books referenced for route information: Mackie, Richard Somerset (1997). Trading Beyond the Mountains: The British Fur Trade on the Pacific 1793-1843. Vancouver: University of British Columbia (UBC) Press. ISBN 0-7748-0613-3; and Meinig, D.W. [1968] (1995). The Great Columbia Plain, Weyerhaeuser Environmental Classic edition, University of Washington Press. ISBN 0-295-97485-0.
context_section_description: After the voyages of Captain Cook European ships entered the Pacific in large numbers. A Maritime fur trade with China developed from the Columbia District (known as Oregon Country in the US). The inland canoe routes were linked to the Pacific coast in 1811 when David Thompson reached the mouth of the Columbia River. A fur trade developed in the interior.  Here, horses were used more often than canoes, furs were trapped by non-Indians and the pelts exported by ship. Here Canadians competed, rather successfully, with the American Fur Company. In 1846 the Columbia District was divided between the two nations at the 49th parallel.
  The interior of British Columbia around the upper Fraser River was called New Caledonia. Goods were carried from Fort Chipewyan up the Peace River (1,500 foot elevation gain and only one significant portage at Hudson Hope, British Columbia) to Fort McLeod and carried over the mountains. It normally took two years for heavy goods to cross the continent, goods being stored at Fort Chipewyan over the winter. Later there was a horse trail from the Fraser River south to Fort Okanogan on the Columbia River.
  The route to the Columbia River ran from Fort Chipewyan southwest up the Athabasca River to Fort Assiniboine and after 1825, west from Fort Edmonton on the North Saskatchewan over an 80 mile horse track to Fort Assiniboine. From there it went up the Athabasca to Jasper House and thence over Athabasca Pass to Boat Encampment on the Columbia. The route was used for messages and light freight but was not practical for heavy freight.
  The far northwest was supplied by an unusual route which was found in 1851 by Robert Campbell who travelled in the opposite direction from the one described here. From the Mackenzie River delta it went south up the Peel River to the depot at Fort McPherson, Northwest Territories, thence back down the Peel and west up the Rat River (by poling or dragging, not paddling) or by a parallel trail and over a half-mile portage to the Little Bell River.  The route from Bell River (Yukon) went past a post called Lapierre's House and down the Porcupine River to Fort Yukon, Alaska about 300 miles west of Fort McPherson. From there it went at least 400 miles south-southeast up the Yukon River and Pelly River, then the Findlayson and Campbell Rivers and a portage to Frances Lake, down the Frances River to the Liard River and east to Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie about 275 miles east of Frances Lake. There was some transport on the Laird, but the Laird river canyon made this difficult.
caption: Map of the route of the York Factory Express, 1820s to 1840s. Modern political boundaries shown. The road from Assiniboine to Edmonton was a horse track built in 1825
exif: {}