Emory Bar
Emory Bar is located along the banks of the Fraser River, roughly 5 km south of Yale. It was, along with dozens of bars along the Fraser, worked voraciously for gold in the late 1850s. Competition between miners was fierce, and, in 1858, Governor Douglas was confronted by angry miners at Emory Bar, who demanded official word on the nature and title of gold claims, an issue that had spurred several recent murders in the area.1
In addition to miner infighting, local First Nations were dragged into the fray, and sought, through Douglas, restitution for the miners’ intrusions and myriad abuses.2 In 1858, one miner described the banks near Yale as a surging mass of jostling humanity of all sorts of conditions, conditions which gave rise to the common occurrences of Night assaults and robberies, varied by an occasional cold-blooded murder or daylight theft.3 Douglas details his travels into this legal and social quagmire in this report to Lytton.
Apparently, gold was not the only precious metal on offer at Emory Bar. As this despatch from 1860 relates, it had silver leads as well.
  • 1. G. P. V. Akrigg and H. B. Akrigg, British Columbia Chronicle, 1847-1871 (Victoria: Discovery Press, 1977), 131.
  • 2. Ibid.
  • 3. Ibid., 132.
Mentions of this place in the documents
People in this document

Douglas, Sir James

Lytton, Sir Edward George Earle Bulwer

Places in this document

Fraser River

Yale

The Colonial Despatches Team. Emory Bar. The Colonial Despatches of Vancouver Island and British Columbia 1846-1871, Edition 2.0, ed. The Colonial Despatches Team. Victoria, B.C.: University of Victoria. https://bcgenesis.uvic.ca/emory_bar.html.

Last modified: 2020-03-30 13:22:16 -0700 (Mon, 30 Mar 2020) (SVN revision: 4193)