In 1857, a shipment of gold sent to the San Francisco mint set off a stampede that nobody could stop — by 1858, over 30,000 miners were pouring up the Fraser River, forcing a colonial governor into an impossible supply crisis. His solution: an improvised lake-and-portage route built by the miners themselves, ending at a quiet grazing flat called Cayoosh. Within two years, that flat had exploded into one of the largest cities on the entire west coast of North America — bigger than almost anywhere west of Chicago, second only to San Francisco. This episode traces Lillooet's wild rise to Mile Zero of the Cariboo Wagon Road, the judge who tried to bring law to a lawless boomtown, and the sudden bypass that emptied it almost as fast as it filled up.

🎙️ Canuckly S02E14 — "Mile 0: The Gold Rush That Built a Metropolis"

• Cold Open — Bigger Than Almost Any City West of Chicago
• 1857: The Gold Shipment That Started It All
• Douglas's Crisis: 30,000 Miners, No Supply Route
• The Douglas Road: Built by the Miners Themselves
• Cayoosh Flat Becomes Lillooet
• A Colony Is Born: Douglas, Begbie & Frontier Law
• Life in a Boomtown of 15,000
• The Cariboo Wagon Road Bypasses the Town
• Who Stayed: Chinese, Settler & St'át'imc Communities
• What the Boom Left Behind Today
• The Mechanics of the Lake-and-Portage Route
• Preview: The Second Gold Rush at Bridge River

#Canuckly #Lillooet #GoldRush #BritishColumbia #CaribooWagonRoad #Mile0 #BCHistory #FraserRiver #HiddenCanada #FrontierHistory