Trails and Travel
in the Sea to Sky corridor
Defined by raging rivers, hemmed by towering mountains, the Sea to Sky Corridor has long been a challenging, yet vital, route between the ocean and the interior.
For millenia it has been a travel and trade route between the Coast Salish Squamish Nation, the Interior Salish Lil'wat Nation, the N'quatqua and other First Nations.
|
Europeans first visited the region in 1791, a Spanish expedition led by Capt Jose Maria Narvaez. |
|
In 1792 Captain George Vancouver explored and mapped the coastline.
| As European settlement expanded on the coast, there was growing interest in developing new routes into the interior, especially to access the gold fields near Lillooet. The first detailed overland survey was conducted by the Royal Engineers from the HMS Plumper in 1860. | |
|
Cattle ranchers around Lillooet began lobbying to create a new route to the markets in Vancouver. In the 1870s the young province of British Columbia undertook their largest capital project to date, the ill-fated Lillooet-Burrard Inlet Cattle Trail. In 1877 the one and only cattle drive undertook the full route to the mouth of the Seymour River. The few survivors, too emaciated to butcher, were put to pasture over the winter to recover.
|
| Abandoning the rigors of the inland route from Squamish to Burrard Inlet, the trail from Squamish to Pemberton became known as the Pemberton Trail. This rigorous route was the solitary road through the region for many years, until the PGE Railway was completed in 1914. Although largely obliterated by railway and highway construction and other developements remnants of the Pemberton Trail still exist on the ground. | |
| From trails to roads, to railways, airports and modern highways, travel through this region is coming full circle. In the very early 1990s people started to dream of building, once again, a trail through the region. Click through for the Sea to Sky Trail story, from 1991 to now. | |
