MyWestworld

Call of the Cariboo (part 6)

Posted on 25. Oct, 2008 by Kerry Banks in Writing from the road

The metric police have not yet got their clutches on Highway 97. The towns along the route are denoted by miles: 70 Mile House, 93 Mile House, 100 Mile House. Each was originally a roadhouse on the Cariboo Gold Rush Trail. Located within a day’s ride of each other, the roadhouses were most often built where water and grasslands were plentiful. Prospectors bound for the gold fields stopped overnight for a meal, a bed and a place to water and feed their horses. Road contractors, or those who didn’t strike it rich in the gold fields, were often responsible for building the stopping houses. They in turn developed communities and local businesses. Although the main Cariboo Wagon Road extended from Yale through Lytton and Cache Creek to Barkerville, Mile 0 is actually measured from Lillooet, where one of the earliest trails to the Cariboo was established in 1858.

Our destination is Xats’ull Heritage Village, a couple of hours drive to the north. Heading up Highway 97, we pass through Clinton, formerly known as 47 Mile House. The Cariboo truly begins here at the junction of the Cariboo Wagon Road and the original Gold Rush Trail. Clinton was an important town during the Gold Rush era, but it can’t make that claim any longer. Even so, it bills itself as “the Guest Ranch Capital of North America,” a grandiose title for a place with a population of 740. However, the village does have several unique attractions. Each year since 1868, it has hosted the Clinton May Ball, the longest running event of its kind in North America. The first Ball was the idea of Mary Smith, co-owner of the old Clinton Hotel, the finest hotel on the Cariboo Road. Guests came by invitation on horse-drawn equipment from as far away as San Francisco and Chicago. The event lasted for days as guests dressed in elegant imported fashions dined and danced in beautifully decorated halls. They say that people still come from far away to attend. This year’s musical entertainment will be provided by a band called The Evergreen Drifters.

Clinton also plays host to the annual Clinton War, a week-long event staged by the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group devoted to the recreation of the Middle Ages “as they ought to have been.” This full-costume festival and war attracts anywhere from 2,000 to 4,000 people, mostly Society members from western Canada. Another Clinton curiosity is a brick museum that once served as the courthouse for Chief Justice Mathew Baillie Begbie, the famous “Hanging Judge.” At six-foot four, with a black, waxed moustache and a white beard, Begbie was an imposing figure. But historians say he did not deserve his nickname, which was applied to him after death. He was lenient and fair and sent fewer criminals to the gallows than his contemporaries did. Only 27 of the 52 murder cases he heard in the history of the colony ended in hangings—and hanging was the punishment required by law for the crime of murder at that time. Begbie was a man of culture, an artist who drew sketches of the witnesses in his courtroom and an opera singer who gave concerts in Victoria. He was also a linguist who heard cases in the Shuswap and Chilcotin languages without needing an interpreter. How then to explain his menacing nickname? It may have been simply due to a confusion of words. The Barkerville Gazette once dubbed him the “Haranguing Judge” because he regularly lectured prisoners in the dock.

History buffs will find plenty to occupy their imaginations on Highway 97. Our immediate concern, however, is caffeine. A good cup of coffee is sometimes hard to find. Racelle and Nora are desperate for “Cowboy Coffee”–not the campfire version, but the Guatemalan brew made by a North Vancouver company called Bean Around the World. But since we can’t find one of their outlets, we pull into Tim Horton’s in 100 Mile House. The joint is jammed. In fact the line extends back to the doors. I pass two disappointed female customers, who are leaving, having decided the wait is not worth it. “Well, we could go the Chatreuse Moose,” says one.

Like Clinton, 100 Mile House has invented a big title for itself: “The Handcrafted Log Capital of North America.” The town also calls itself the “International Nordic Ski Capital.” In defence of that claim it boasts the world’s largest pair of cross-country skis. Standing on display beside the Visitor’s Centre, they are 10.9 metres in length and weigh 273 kilograms. Outside the Red Coach Inn you can also see a remnant of the Gold Rush era–the only surviving stagecoach of the Barnard Express and Stage Line.
 
Just up the road is 108 Mile House which features a heritage site with a collection of seven historical buildings on a three-hectare lakeside property, including a 1908 Clydesdale barn, one of the largest in Canada, the 105 Mile roadhouse, the 108 Mile telegraph office, and the 1867 hotel and store. Despite its placid setting, this place is also reputed to be the site of B.C.’s most heinous murder cases. From 1875 to 1885, the roadhouse here was run by a woman named Agnes McVee, her husband Jim and her brutal son-in-law, Al Riley. The trio are credited with anywhere from 10 to 56 murders of gold-carrying miners and the kidnapping and selling of young girls to guests. After the miners were killed, their bodies were bundled into a covered wagon, and Jim McVee dumped the remains into one of the many lakes in the area. Agnes meanwhile cleaned out their possessions, and buried gold and coins in the vicinity of the Inn. As a sideline, Jim collected the men’s horses, and when he had a sufficient number to make up a string, he sold the animals in Fort Kamloops.

The cutthroats continued their murderous operation for 10 years before finally being apprehended. Their arrest came after Agnes poisoned her husband in retaliation of his killing of another man that she had fallen for. Agnes and Al Riley were taken to New Westminster, jailed and charged with kidnapping and murder. In June 1885, shortly before she was brought to trial, Agnes committed suicide by poisoning. Riley was found guilty and hanged. Nobody is sure how much gold Agnes stole from her victims; estimates range from $100,000 to $150,000. Of that, an amount of $2,500 in gold nuggets and coins was unearthed by a farmer in the 1924, and a further $6,000 came to light when Block Brothers developed the area some years later.

It’s early afternoon when we descend down a dusty track and arrive at Xats’ull Heritage Village, a cultural camp run by the Soda Creek Reserve, the northernmost band of the Shuswap Nation. The camp, which stretches across a grassy bench above the roiling Fraser River has been a village site for 5,000 years. Fishing has been carried on here forever because migrating salmon concentrate in the huge eddies down below and can be caught with dip nets, and because the hot winds that blow through the gorge are ideal for drying fish. There is a wind blowing today, but it’s cool and it carries the scent of sweetgrass.

(To be continued …)

Photo Credits:

#1: bcguestranches.com

#2: briarfiles.blogspot.com

#3: bartadesign.com