West viewpoint in Kamloops
Founded in 1812, Fort Kamloops stood at a natural crossroads. For 50 years it remained the focus of an inland fur empire until the roaring mining boom of the 1860s. Ranchers, with cattle and horses, replaced the miners. They settled, and stayed, to see two railways bring prosperity anew to this land of sagebrush, sun, and great rivers.
Kamloops is within the vast traditional territory of the Secwepemc who lived in an area that occupied approximately the area from Cache Creek on the west, the Rocky Mountains on the east, the northern Okanagan on the south and Quesnel on the north. The site where the North and South Thompson Rivers meet they call Kahm-o-loops which means "meeting of the waters." Archaeological sites dating to at least 2,300 years ago exist on the riverbanks close to the Secwepemc Cultural Centre, a place where local Shuswap First Nations history and contemporary life are portrayed in museum exhibits and an outdoor setting which includes reconstructed subterraanean houses.
David Stuart, an employee of John Jacob Astor's Pacific Fur Company (PFC), passed this way via the Okanagan in 1811. The following year another PFC man, Alexander Ross, returned to built a fur-trading post on what is now the site of downtown Kamloops. A few months later Joseph LaRocque of the North West Co. (NWC) also built a post (called Fort Thpmpson) on the north side of the river. In 1813 the NWC bought out the PFC and consolidated their faciilty around Fort Thompson, later re-named Fort Kamloops. Trade was brisk as the post was situated on the main route to the Coast. By 1821, just after the union of the NWC and Hudson's Bay Co., the beaver population was so depleted that trade stopped and Kamloops declined in importance. However, Fort Kamloops was an important stopping place on the Brigade Trail which the HBC used to transport furs from New Caledonia south through the Okanaga to Fort Vancouver (now Vancouver, Washington). The brigades retraced the route northwards taking the year's supplies and trade goods.
In 1842 HBC chief factor John Tod built a new fort on the site of North Kamloops, but in 1862 this was abandoned a new post was built close to where Stuart's original fort was built in what is downtown Kamloops. In 1912 the HBC marked its centennial in Kamloops by opening a new department store.
More settlement began at Kamloops following the discovery of gold on Tranquille Creek in 1861. In 1865, a steamer was built on the Kamloops Lake and the following year a road was put through from Cache Creek. As with other BC communities, the arrival of the railways caused the town to flourish. Today Kamloops is one of BC's largest cities and railway centers.
Kamloops Museum and Archives
» www.city.kamloops.bc.ca/museum/history.shtml
Secwepemc Peoples
