Cache Creek (Village) / Carquile Hat Creek Ranch / Hat Creek / McLean Lake

Phone : (250) 457-6237
Your Host(s) : Municipal Administration

Cache Creek, BC (Nearby: Boston Flats, Ashcroft, Spatsum, Loon Lake, Walhachin)

  • Cache Creek (Village)
  • Carquile Hat Creek Ranch
  • Hat Creek
  • Hat Creek

1389 Quartz Road
Cache Creek, British Columbia
V0K 1H0


British Columbia Tourism Region : Thompson Okanagan

Description From Owner:
  • Commander R.C. Mayne, in his account of his inland journey in 1859, mentions camping 'by the side or Riviere de la Cache, a small stream flowing into the Bonaparte.'
  • Cache Creek was earlier noted on David Douglas's sketch map of 1833.
  • This latter mention of Cache Creek, many years before the discovery of gold, demolishes Gosnell's explanation that miners cached provisions here, and similarly the story, told in loving detail in Winnifred Futcher's The Great North Road to the Cariboo,
  • of how a lone gunman, having murdered a miner travelling south from Barkerville and stolen his eighty pounds of gold, was seriously wounded by a pursuing settler, cached his stolen gold, and disappeared forever,
  • leaving only a riderless horse with a bloody saddle as evidence of his fate.
  • The story has all the marks of a fine Cariboo yarn but is nothing more. All we can say is that, at some time in or before 1833, somebody cached something in the vicinity of Cache Creek.
  • Mary Balf, formerly of the Kamloops Museum, may be right in suggesting that there was a collection point at Cache Creek for furs enroute to Thompson's River Post (Fort Kamloops).
  • Today the word cache often refers to a place where supplies have been deposited on a raised platform out of the reach of wild animals. The meaning of the word in French, however, is 'a hiding place,' and the cache of an early fur trader was exactly that.
  • A round piece of turf about eighteen inches across was removed, leaving the mouth for a large bottle-shaped excavation. This excavation was lined with dry branches, and the cached goods were then inserted.
  • Finally some earth and the round piece of turf were put on top and the surplus earth all carefully removed. If the job had been done expertly, possible marauders would see no evidence that they were passing a cache.
  • Hat Creek - G.M. Dawson has preserved for us the origin of this name in a Shuswap legend about their hero Kwil-i-eli and two other supernatural men:
  • A trial of strength was arranged, Kwil-i-eli proposing that each should push his head against a rock and see which could make the deepest impression.
  • Kleså and Took-im-in-elst tried first, and each managed to make a shallow impression, but Kwil-i-elf followed and pressed his head in to the shoulders.
  • This happened at a place near the mouth of Hat Creek, and the name of this stream …
  • is derived from this story, and from the circumstance that the impressions made in the rock at this time are still shown by the Indians. (Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, Section 2 [1891]:32)
  • With permission from G.P.V and Helen B. Akrigg 1997 British Columbia Place Names. UBC Press.


Address of this page: http://bc.ruralroutes.com/CacheCreek



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Cache Creek (Village) / Carquile Hat Creek Ranch / Hat Creek / McLean Lake, Phone : (214) 748-3647

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  • McLean Lake

  • After Chief Trader Donald McLean, one of the very few IIBC officers with a deserved reputation for brutality. He is said to have come out of retirement at his Bonaparte River ranch to aid the government forces in the Chilcotin War because he saw a chance to raise his record of nineteen Indians slain to an even score. Before he could get his twentieth, an Indian in ambush shot him through the heart. He was the father of the notorious 'McLean boys' hanged many years later for murdering a police officer.


  • Arrowstone Hills

  • The Indians made arrowheads out of the fine black basalt found here.


Visitors to this page: 1,232     Emails sent through this page: 1     This record last updated: August 13, 2022

Nearby:
Nearby Lakes and Mountains:
  • McLean Lake, 7km
  • Barnes Lake, 14km
  • Willard Lake, 15km
  • Gallagher Lakes, 11km
  • Tsotin Lake, 12km
  • Veasy Lake, 15km
  • Separating Lake, 17km
  • Stinking Lake, 16km
  • Harry Lake, 16km
  • Nesbitt Lake, 18km
  • Bedard Lake, 21km
  • Venables Lake, 27km
  • Clemes Lake, 19km
  • Brousseau Lake, 21km
  • Glossy Mountain, 23km
  • Twaal Lake, 27km
  • White Mountain, 26km
  • Pennie Lake, 20km
  • Cultus Lake, 20km
  • Blue Earth Lake, 27km
  • Langley Lake, 24km
  • Nicoelton Mountain, 31km
  • Wohlleben Lakes, 31km
  • Loon Lake, 33km
  • Lookout Point, 31km
  • 6 Mile Lake, 28km
  • Knife Lakes, 34km
  • Aleece Lake, 22km
  • Rim Lake, 33km
  • Stick Lake, 29km
  • Alkali Lakes, 29km
  • Kersey Lake, 29km
  • Hihium Lake, 31km
  • 4 Mile Lake, 30km
  • Jim Black Lake, 33km
  • Finney Lake, 23km
  • Dougherty Lake, 37km
  • Three Mile Lake, 32km
  • Parke Lake, 28km
  • Turquoise Lake, 26km
  • Salt Lake, 34km
  • Mount Fehr, 29km
  • Crown Lake, 26km
  • Duck Lakes, 35km
  • Murray Peak, 37km
  • East Camp Lake, 41km
  • Big O.K. Lake, 39km
  • Forge Mountain, 34km
  • Mount Martley, 28km
  • Pavilion Mountain, 31km