Kicking Horse River

The Kicking Horse River is a river located in the Canadian Rockies of southeastern British Columbia, Canada. The river begins near the Waputik Icefield in Yoho National Park and moves in a southwesterly direction past the towns of Field and Golden before reaching its confluence with the Columbia River.

The river was named in 1858, when James Hector, a member of the Palliser Expedition, was kicked by his packhorse while exploring the river. Hector survived and named the river and the associated pass as a result of the incident. The Kicking Horse Pass, which connects through the Rockies to the valley of the Bow River, was the route through the mountains subsequently taken by the Canadian Pacific Railway when it was constructed during the 1880s. The railway's Big Hill and associated Spiral Tunnels are in the Kicking Horse valley and necessitated by the steep rate of descent of the river and its valley.

Kicking Horse Pedestrian Bridge in Golden is the longest authentic covered timber frame bridge in Canada.Fact|date=July 2008 Planned as a community project by the [http://www.tfguild.org/ Timber Framer's Guild] , local volunteers were joined by carpenters and timber framers from the United States and from Europe. The bridge structure is 150 feet long, with a 210,000-pound Burr arch structure. The bridge was completed in September 2001.

N.B. Kicking Horse Mountain Resort, which gets its name from the river and pass, is "not" located in the Canadian Rockies, but opposite the pass across the Rocky Mountain Trench in the Selkirk Mountains, on the other side of the town of Golden.

Natural History

The Kicking Horse River was inscribed in the Canadian Heritage Rivers System in January 1987, for its natural and human heritage. [cite web | url = http://www.chrs.ca/Rivers/KickingHorse/KickingHorse-F_e.htm | title = Kicking Horse River | accessdate = 2006-10-24 | publisher = Canadian Heritage River System]

ee also

*Divide Creek

Notes