{"id":35917,"date":"2015-07-16T03:44:28","date_gmt":"2015-07-16T03:44:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/trgg.ca\/?page_id=35917"},"modified":"2017-08-15T17:41:35","modified_gmt":"2017-08-15T17:41:35","slug":"culture","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.tumblerridgegeopark.ca\/index.php\/culture\/","title":{"rendered":"Human History in the Geopark"},"content":{"rendered":"

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<\/span>Expeditions & Explorers<\/span><\/div><\/div>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

While the Alexander Mackenzie expedition through the Peace River area in 1789 is well documented as the first European presence in the region, there is no written record of any activity in the Tumbler Ridge area until the twentieth century.\u00a0 Early exploration of the Peace River Country to the north and the Rocky Mountains to the south was prompted by the fur trade, the forestry industry and the search for a navigable rail pass across the Rocky Mountains to link the bread basket of the prairies with a Pacific Ocean port.\u00a0 One such survey was led by E.W. Jarvis and CF Hanington through the mountains to the south in 1875, leaving behind the names Jarvis Pass, Jarvis Lakes, and Mt Hanington.\u00a0 The first documented crossing of the Pine Pass occurred in 1806, by a party of deserters from Simon Fraser\u2019s expedition.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Joseph Hunter crossed the Pine Pass in 1877 on behalf of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), however George Dawson\u2019s 1879 crossing of the Pine Pass is the first formally documented crossing, working in his capacity as a surveyer..\u00a0 Dawson noted tributaries of the Pine, the Sukunka and Murray Rivers, but did not venture up those valleys.\u00a0 There are oral accounts of miners working in the Bullmoose \u2013 Murray River areas in 1896, however no written documentation exists to support this claim.<\/span><\/p>\n

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The first European to have definitively visited what is now the Tumbler Ridge area is Spencer Tuck.\u00a0 Employed as a timber cruiser, Tuck left Jasper House with a M\u00e9tis guide in the spring of 1907.\u00a0 He succeeded in staking approximately two hundred fifty million board feet of lumber for his employer in Yellowhead Pass, and arrived in Grande Prairie with no food and barely any clothes on September 15.\u00a0 Tuck became a long-time resident of Pouce Coupe.<\/span><\/p>\n

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