Alexandra Bridge Provincial Park

.This small 55 ha. park is centred around the site of the original Cariboo Wagon Road bridge over the Fraser River. Established in 1984 because of its historical qualifications, it has picnic tables but no camping. Public access if via a trail from a parking lot on the east side of the Fraser, as the old portion of the pre-modernization Cariboo Highway, which used the bridge, is no longer open to the public. .

The Nlaka'pamux and First Nations have inhabited the area for over 9,500 years. [cite book | author=Carlson, Keith Thor (ed.) | title=A Stó:lō-Coast Salish Historical Atlas | publisher=Douglas & McIntyre | year=2001 | id=ISBN 1-5505-4812-3] The first white persons known to have visited the site were Simon Fraser and his crew during their expedition down the Fraser Canyon in 1808. Situated at a narrows in the canyon, with room for the necessary abutments, the site was an important fishing site for the and Nlaka'pamux First Nations peoples. like all such locations in the Fraser Canyon (which are many), and there was a large native village on the west bank just downstream from the bridge site in pre-railway times. Fish-drying racks can still be seen at the location today, as also visible in historic photographs from early times.

A difficult and costly trail, intended to link Fort Langley with New Caledonia because of the loss of the old route in the wake of the Oregon Treaty of 1846, began on the east bank of the river and switchbacked up the mountainside, with "staircases" made for the mules and other pack animals. Dangerous and beset with difficult snows, the trail - expensive to build - was abandoned after only a few uses sand superseded by trails connecting inland farther south. ["British Columbia Chronicle,: Gold & Colonists", Helen and G.P.V. Akrigg, Discovery Press, Vancouver (1977) ISBN ISBN 0-919624-03-0K] There is mention of a native-built pole-bridge at the site, torn down to make way for the "new" one of the 1860s, but a ferry also operated in this area connecting with Kequaloose on the east bank, where the Brigade Trail begins its climb over the Cascade Mountains before descending back to the Fraser via the Anderson River at Boston Bar. During the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush in 1858, a ferry service was established here in a monopoly situation, as the J.W. Hicks, the magistrate at Yale, had his "fingers in the pie", as with many other businesses under his official purview. ["McGowan's War", Donald J. Hauka, New Star Books, Vancouver (2000) ISBN 1-55420-001-6] (Hicks was fired because of his various indiscretions during the affair known as McGowan's War).

The original road bridge was constructed in 1861 by Joseph Trutch, Commissioner of Public Works for the Colony of British Columbia, as part of the development of the Cariboo Road using native and Chinese labour (though a government minister, Trutch contracted the job privately to his own profit and had the toll license at the location as part of his remuneration) He named the after Princess Alexandra of Wales (wife of Victoria's eldest son, who would become Edward VII). Just above the bridge on the east bank is Alexandra Lodge, one of the more important roadhouses of the many on the Cariboo Road, situated at the base of the arduous climb up the next hill northwards and at the end of the torturous journey connected Yale to Spuzzum. The Alexandra Lodge is one of the few original roadhouses still standing and, at times, in operation. Also nearby is the Alexandra Tunnel, one of many in the route of the Canadian National Railway through the Fraser Canyon, though receiving its name only in 1974.

The original bridge was dismantled in 1912 due to railway construction and the long abandonment of the Cariboo Road, itself a casualty of CPR construction in the 1880s. After World War I the dawn of the automotive era saw a reinvestment in roads in the province, including the re-opening of the Fraser Canyon to road traffic in the form of the new Cariboo Highway in the 1920s,and a new bridge was built in 1926. This bridge still exists today, though it is no longer used for automobile traffic. The new Alexandra Bridge is c.2km downstream and uses a high truss-arch span to cross the canyon.

Like nearly everwhere along the Fraser Canyon in this area, the site of the bridge is a traditional fishing spot because of the way the river is forced through narrow, steep banks, offering fishermen a chance to reach salmon struggling through the stronger current through the narrowed gorge. Millions of Spring, Coho, Chum, Pink and Sockeye salmon pass through the park on their way to spawning grounds every year. As well, the park contains many western hemlock, western redcedar and Douglas-fir.

Terrain

Rising steeply on the east bank of the Fraser River, the site contains two well-defined glacio-fluvial benches.

ee also

*Hell's Gate
*Siska, British Columbia
*Bridge River Rapids
*List of crossings of the Fraser River

References

External links

* [http://www.env.gov.bc.ca/bcparks/explore/parkpgs/alexandra.html Alexandra Bridge Provincial Park]
*BCGNIS|38798