Yale (CA-BC)
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Yale is an unincorporated town in British Columbia.
Located on the Fraser River, it is generally considered to be on the dividing line between the Coast and the Interior regions of the British Columbia mainland. Immediately north of the town, the Fraser Canyon begins and the river is generally considered unnavigable past this point. Rough water is common on the Fraser anywhere upstream from Chilliwack and even more so above Hope, about 20 mi (32 km) south of Yale. However, steamers could make it to Yale, good pilots and water conditions permitting, and the town had a busy dockside life as well as a variety of bars, restaurants, hotels, saloons and various services. Its maximum population during the gold rush era was in the 15,000 range. More generally, it housed 5,000-8,000.
he town was founded in 1848 by the Hudson's Bay Company as Fort Yale by Ovid Allard, the appointed manager of the new post, who named it after his superior, James Murray Yale, then Chief Factor of the Columbia District. In its heyday at the peak of the gold rush, it was reputed to be the largest city west of Chicago and north of San Francisco. It also earned epithets such as "the wickedest little settlement in British Columbia" and "a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah" of vice, violence and lawlessness.
Yale played an important role in certain events of the gold rush period which threatened British control in the region with annexation by the United States: the Fraser Canyon War and McGowan's War. The Governor came to Yale during the first crisis, and government officials Matthew Baillie Begbie, Chartres Brew and Richard Clement Moody during the second, to address American miners and take control of matters. The unrest threatened the rule of the Crown over the Mainland (or "New Caledonia" as it was called before the creation of the mainland colony. (New Caledonia was usually applied to the fur district northwest from present-day Prince George, British Columbia).
As Yale was the head of river navigation, it was the best location to be designated for the start of the Cariboo Wagon Road, as there were no usable roads between Yale and the settlements nearer the Fraser's mouth. The Cariboo Road, built in the early 1860s, ran from Yale to Barkerville via Lytton, Ashcroft and Quesnel.
