| Whatcom Trail |
Website Links For Whatcom |
Information AboutWhatcom Trail |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT WHATCOM TRAIL | |
| historic trails and roads in the united states | |
| history of british columbia | |
| gold rushes | |
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A more westerly route now in use for a major border crossing (at Sumas ) was not usable due to the presence of a large shallow lake, now drained and turned into agricultural land. An alternate route to the main Whatcom Trail was the Skagit Trail, which went up the river of that name to its headwaters, from which another "back valley" emerges on the Fraser near Hope , then the HBC fur trading post Fort Hope . There are no known statistics for the number of goldseekers who travelled the Whatcom Trail during the gold rush, although certainly they may be counted in the thousands. Its existence was in open defiance of the edict from the British Governor on Vancouver Island that access to the Fraser ''must'' come from Victoria , and its ongoing use proof of the early colony's weakness to political intrusion by US citizens, as is also the case with the Okanagan Trail . US troops were stationed near the valley's southern US end were put on alert during the McGowan's War crisis of 1858-59, and were also stationed there during the San Juan Islands Dispute (the Pig War ). Similarly, on the Canadian side, the large tract of land west of First Nations numbers as it was to potential American aggression. There is no border crossing at the Columbia Valley today, only a fence across farmland. |
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