Dewdney Trail

The Dewdney Trail is a 720 km (450 mi) trail in British Columbia, Canada that served as a major thoroughfare in mid-19th century British Columbia. The trail was a critical factor in the development and strengthening of the newly established British Colony of British Columbia, tying together mining camps and small towns that were springing up along the route during the gold rush era prior to the colony's joining Canadian Confederation in 1871. The route's importance and urgency was prompted because many new gold finds were occurring at locations near the US border that were much more easily accessed from Washington Territory than via any practicable route from the barely settled parts of the Lower Mainland and Cariboo. Today, approximately 80 percent of the former trail has been incorporated into the Crowsnest Highway.

The trail was built in southern British Columbia and linked what was then Fort Hope (now just Hope) in the southwest to what became Fort Steele in the southeast. Covering a distance of 720 kilometers (450 mi), its purpose was to secure British control of the parts of the colony flanking the US border, which included the new gold rush at Wild Horse Creek and at other points between such as Rock Creek. Approximately 80 per cent of what is now Highway 3 started life as the Dewdney Trail, but this is largely because the terrain allows for no other low-altitude transit of the regions involved.

The route very roughly parallels the Canada-US border along the 49th parallel, and at times reaches elevations of more than 1,200 metres (4,000 ft). It passes through varied scenery, including four major mountain ranges (Cascades, Monashees, Selkirks and Purcells), some major river valleys (Skagit, Similkameen, Okanagan, Kettle, Columbia, Goat, Moyie and Kootenay) and historic townsites such as Hope, Princeton, Grand Forks, Trail, Creston, Yahk, Moyie and Cranbrook.

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