30 miles north of Prince George at Summit Lake on Hwy 97
On this height of land stretching from east to west, the waters of the continent divide. Streams flow north to the distant Arctic and south to the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. Indians, explorers and fur traders portaged their canoes over this low summit for centuries, using the waterways as natural travel routes.
Summit Lake marks the point from which drainage goes north rather than south. To the north, the lake drains into the Crooked River which flows to McLeods Lake, then to the Parsnip and Peace Rivers. To the south is the Fraser River with its many tributaries such as the Nechako which flows out of Stuart Lake, the Quesnel River, and eventually the Thompson River.
First Nations, European explorers and fur traders were dependent on waterways. The Giscome Portage was well known to native people long before they showed it to prosepctors in the mid 1800s. It is a seven mile portage from Giscome on the Fraser River to Summit Lake and was used to travel from the Fraser to the waterways eventually leading north and east to the Peace River. Fur traders used it to bring supplies that came from distant Hudson Bay to Fort St. James and other posts to the south west. Huble Homestead is a historic site located at Giscome Portage Regional Park. It incorporates the homestead and trading post built in 1905 by Al Huble.
McLeods Lake post, built in 1805, is on the northern side of the divide. In 1805 the North West Company established a trading post here, the first permanent European settlement in BC. It was very strategically located on the main water route coming into BC from the Peace River area. A cairn beside the highway commemorates the fort. To the west of the highway is the McLeod Lake Indian Reserve and nearby are the remains of a log building built for the fur trade, but long after the initial construction of McLeods Lake post in 1805.
For more information about Huble Homestead Historic Site
» www.hublehomestead.ca
