Fountain
The British Columbia government lists several entries for features named Fountain, including a number of First Nations reserves, a creek, a flat, and a locality, the latter of which is likely the most relevant to the despatches, as it was a part of the Fraser River gold rush route of the late 1850s.1
The Fountain, or Fountains, is located roughly 10 km upriver from Lillooet, and a few km above Bridge River, near the mouth of Fountain Creek, and, according to Bancroft, it was so named by the French Canadians on account of some natural features in the vicinity; he goes on to report that Fountain was the ultimate camp of the mining emigration of 1858.2
This despatch, from 1858, reports that sluices in and around the Fountain area yield at the rate of 20 dollars a day to the hand. And this despatch, again from 1858, details the average daily return of each of Five Rockers extracted at the dry diggings of Fountain.
  • 1. Search Results: Fountain, BC Geographical Names Information System.
  • 2. Hubert Howe Bancroft, The Works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, vol. 32, History of British Columbia 1792-1887 (San Francisco: The History Company, 1887), 454-455.
Mentions of this place in the documents
Places in this document

Bridge River

Fraser River

Lillooet

The Colonial Despatches Team. Fountain. 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/fountain.html.

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