Cayoosh Creek
| Cayoosh Creek | |
| Cayoose Creek | |
 Cayoosh Creek
|
|
| Name origin: wild pony local variant of "cayoose", which ultimately is from Spanish caballo, referring to a certain mountain breed of horse | |
| Country | Canada |
|---|---|
| Province | British Columbia |
| Source | Cayoosh Range |
| Mouth | Seton River |
| - location | Lillooet |
| - elevation | 229 m (751 ft) |
| - coordinates | 50°40′7″N 121°58′21″W / 50.66861°N 121.97250°WCoordinates: 50°40′7″N 121°58′21″W / 50.66861°N 121.97250°W |
| Basin | 885 km2 (342 sq mi) |
| Discharge | for mouth |
| - average | 13.9 m3/s (491 cu ft/s) |
| - max | 211 m3/s (7,451 cu ft/s) |
| - min | 0.377 m3/s (13 cu ft/s) |
Cayoosh Creek is a northeast-flowing tributary of the Seton River in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The name Cayoosh Creek remains on the bridge-sign crossing the stream on BC Highway 99 and continues in use locally to refer to the final reaches of the Seton River, formerly Seton Creek, which prior to the renaming ending at the confluence with Cayoosh Creek. The creek is the namesake of Cayoosh Creek Indian Reserve No. 1, one of the main Indian reserves of the Cayoose Creek Indian Band (aka the Sekwelwas First Nation), which lies adjacent to what was renamed the Seton River without local consultation.
Cayoosh Creek flows generally northeast from sources in the eponymous Cayoosh Range north of Cayoosh Pass to join the Seton River at Lillooet, British Columbia. In local parlance, the 4 kilometre length of the Seton River to its confluence with the Fraser River at the town of Lillooet is referred to as Cayoosh Creek, as is indicated by a Department of Highways sign on the BC Highway 99 bridge crossing it just before the Bridge of the Twenty-Three Camels over the Fraser, which lies immediately upstream of the river's mouth.
Although already 10 km long when it enters Duffey Lake, a 20-kilometre (12 mi) long lake which is the focus of its upper basin, at the lake's outflow it begins a rapid descent, carving deeply between the Cayoosh Range and the main Lillooet Ranges to the south. Duffey Lake is named for "Sapper Duffy", a Lieut. Patrick Duffey (or "Duffy") or the Royal Engineers, who was assigned to investigate the route of the Cayoosh valley as a possible wagon road from the head of Lillooet Lake to Lillooet, which because of the steep descent westwards from Cayoosh Pass was not gone forward with. The creek's final descent to the confluence with the Seton is a deeper and deeper canyon, narrow and twisting, with the last ridges of the Cayoosh Range forming a rock wall thousands of feet in height, immediately opposite the highway across a very narrow gorge below. The north wall of the canyon was the location of the Golden Cache Mine, which started a small regional rush in 1897-1901 and whose former mill buildings were in the depths of the canyon below the highway and whose workings were reached by ramparts beneath overhangs on the highest part of the canyon wall. Opposite it was the Ample Mine, also a gold mine in the same period. This stretch of the canyon was the site of the hunt for First World War hero-turned-outlaw Frank Gott, who is commemorated by Gott Peak which is on the southern rim of the Cayoosh basin, on the divide separating it from the basin of the Stein River, which parallels it roughly to the south, and which is which is one of Cayoosh Creek's several large southern tributaries.
...
Wikipedia