Barkerville (British Columbia)

Barkerville was from 1863 the capital of the Cariboo Gold Rush in British Columbia, Canada. It is located in the Quesnel Highlands in the Cariboo Mountains about 80 km east of Quesnel and was declared on June 4, 1924 National Historic Site.

Was named the place after the English prospector Billy Barker, who in 1862 find it here. Four decades later, was the place of the times had more than 5,000 inhabitants, a ghost town. Since 1958 he is restored and researched its history.

History

Barkerville was created as a gold mining town. After Billy Barker (1817-1894) as one of the first prospectors in the Cariboo region was looking for, find a bunch of new places like the eponymous Barkerville, Keithley Creek, Quesnel Forks, Antler, Richfield, Fort Alexandria and Horsefly. Known as the Cariboo region attracted many gold prospectors, of which three years earlier, in turn, many had followed the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. Now moved northward towards, but with new gold discoveries reached the reputation of the region and Europe, and many men were on their way there.

Barkerville was the largest city north of San Francisco and west of Chicago. Barkers Gold Fund - his claim was so rich that he yielded 37,500 ounces of gold - broke within a few weeks from the immigration of thousands of soldiers of fortune.

The remoteness of the area and the skyrocketing demand caused the price of food and equipment to skyrocket. Only with the construction of the Cariboo Wagon Road, a cart path, the Governor James Douglas in 1861 led, and which was completed in 1865, arrived goods in sufficient quantity in the place, so that normalized prices again. The Hudson 's Bay Company, which at that time was still a major power in the West of the later Canada, feared at first that the expected onslaught of Americans could lead to future annexation of the entire area, as the company in 1849 their forts had lost in Washington and Oregon. This time only a few Americans were there because most returned to the strife-torn homeland.

Initially there was only the place of tents and simple cabin, but the population increased to over 5,000 inhabitants. Shops were opened to cover basic needs, restaurants, emerged alone 20 saloons, a theater ( Theatre Royal ) and brothels, soon appeared a newspaper and there was even a literary society, the Cariboo Literary Society and a Masonic lodge.

The government made the Gold Prospecting for a license. There was a police force and a court, where Judge Matthew Baillie Begbie was nicknamed " the hanging judge". He recoiled neither before nor death sentences against forced labor and took to the dismay of many Californians, the statements of Indians and Chinese as seriously as everyone else.

On September 16, 1868 many wooden houses were destroyed by fire, but were built 90 buildings again within six weeks. Now was the close Main Street, the main street widened, it emerged sidewalks, and 1880 was a first school with 13 pupils.

With the end of the Gold Rush, most of the residents left the city. At the same time wandered to the Chinese, whose numbers in the Cariboo area increased to 1100 to 1200, according to the local MPs Charles Wilson 1881-1884 from two to three hundred. They acquired claims and sat down, despite the use of force against the resistance of whites through. In the business were Chinese companies, such as the Kwong Lee Company, indispensable. The Chinese community was extremely economical, the men were living in a confined space, and we helped each other by establishing a non-profit societies. Litigation sparked the community internally, without taking the jurisdiction of the province to complete. The industrious and thrifty Chinese often took Claims, which had already been abandoned by Europeans. However, they were unable to halt the population decline.

A brief revival caused the global economic crisis, with its strongly rising gold prices, the gold seekers lured to Barkerville again.

1958, the government decided the province, the nearly deserted location to restore and recover the history of each house. The few inhabitants left the place, sometimes with government support, and pulled during the restoration measures to New Barkerville. In addition to the historic site of the " Barkerville Historic Town ", continue to work in the academic world in historical research of the neighboring ghost town arose.