Item T0658:0001 - 0002 - Gus Milliken interview

CALL NUMBER: T0658:0001 RECORDED: [location unknown], 1963-03-13 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Mr. Gus Milliken tells many stories from many different sources about the area around Yale. The first story takes place during the gold rush about a man who sells another man a claim to a mine which turned out to be a gravel mine, not a gold mine. Several other prospecting stories, some of which are fictitious. Early stories about the sternwheelers, including an argument between an engineer and the captain of a steamship; legends about the packer Cataline (Jean Caux); pack mules near Lytton; March 1858; a man named Hill, who discovered the first gold along the Fraser; the first hotels in the area; Joe MacKenzie, an original '58er; Ned Stout; Dewdney Landing; Bill MacKenzie, orchards, the building of the CPR station at Yale; some historical facts about the town of Yale; the first sawmill, first town council and first white male born in BC, Chinese miners and old timers. TRACK 2: Mr. Milliken describes how Yale got its name; its origins as a fort in 1846; the Hudson's Bay Company; the first buildings in Yale, L.T. Hill as the first person to discover gold in 1858; the relationship between the Hudson's Bay Company and San Francisco; the original Fort Hope, the people who worked in the first gold mines, activity in the area as it was being established, the first post office in 1916, Hope as a gold mining town; prospectors who had to move on to other places because all of the land had been staked; a dynamite plant; other early homes.

CALL NUMBER: T0658:0002 RECORDED: [location unknown], 1963-03-13 SUMMARY: TRACK 1: Mr. Milliken continues describing Andrew Onderdonk, who was "supposed to have built the railway but who was in fact the engineer". He describes the American company that paid for the building of the railway from Emory to beyond Yale. He discusses the construction of the railway; the first roads in the area; Indian trails in the area, including Douglas Portage and how Mr. Yale named it; he describes Mr. Yale; gold in Rock Creek; the Kettle Valley and the Canadian National Railroad [sic]; mills in the area; the Hope-Nicola trail and other trails.