Port Douglas, British Columbia
human settlement in British Columbia, Canada
Port Douglas, sometimes referred to simply as Douglas, is a remote community in British Columbia, Canada at east of the mouth of the Lillooet River, and at the head of Harrison Lake, which is the head of river navigation from the Strait of Georgia. Port Douglas was the second major settlement of any size on the British Columbia mainland (after Yale) during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. It came into being in 1858 when Governor Douglas ordered that it be laid out.
From Port Douglas to Lillooet a mixed land and water route was built, named the Douglas Road, a.k.a. the Lillooet Trail, Harrison Trail or Lakes Route. During its rowdy heyday, Port Douglas's population numbered in the thousands, and many of the B.C. mainland's first companies had their start here, including the famous B.X. Express and other freighting companies that relocated to the Fraser Canyon with the completion of the Cariboo Wagon Road in the mid-1860s.
Port Douglas dwindled in size rapidly with the abandonment of the Douglas Road. Today, there is a small population of 10 people, and 3 inhabitable homes. There is a playground and a public washroom.
A land alienation pattern on the lakeshore to the southwest of Douglas, across the mouth of the Lillooet River and down the lake a bit, remains on the map as Tipella City (also known as Tipella, or Tipella Hot Springs).
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This entry incorporates text from “Port Douglas, British Columbia” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.