Colonial Despatches

This Canadian National Historic Site is located on the west bank of the Fraser River in south-central British Columbia. In 1793 Sir Alexander Mackenzie was the first European to visit the site that would come to be known as Fort Alexandria, which was then a Secwepemc village.1

Thirty years later, the North West Company set up Fort Alexandria, bearing a variance on Alexander Mackenzie’s name, a year before the company merged with the HBC.2 Fort Alexandria was the northernmost trading post of the HBC’s Pacific brigade trail.3 but once gold was discovered there in the 1850s, the site swelled in population and importance, along with gold-booms elsewhere in the Cariboo region.4

This letter from 1859 reports that the accounts from the upper districts of Fraser River are most encouraging, rich alluvial diggings having been found in the neighbourhood of Ft Alexandria. The present-day town of Alexandria is on the right bank of the Fraser, just up from the site of the fort.5

• 1. Fort Alexandria National Historic Site of Canada, Canada's Historic Places.
• 2. Ibid.
• 3. Ibid.
• 4. Ibid.
• 5. Ibid.