Colonial Despatches

Hill’s Bar is located on the shores of the Fraser River, just south of Yale. It, along a with a variety of auriferous bars, was a profitable mining spot during the Fraser River Gold Rush of 1857-58. Miners appeared to have named the bar after the first European man to pan there.1 According to Akrigg and Akrigg, the Halkomelem name for the area is Qualark.2

Hill’s Bar appears in many depsatches, starting in 1858. For example, this despatch, from Douglas to Lytton, reports that one George Cade, who owns a sluice on Hill's Bar, had four hired men at wages of five dollars a day, under him, and together they averaged earnings of 400 dollars a day.

• 1. Hills Bar, BC Geographical Names Information System.
• 2. G. P. V. Akrigg and H. B. Akrigg, British Columbia Place Names (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1997), 112.