Stave River

Stave River
Country	Canada
Cities	Mission, British Columbia, Maple Ridge, British Columbia
Source	Stave Glacier
- location	Garibaldi Ranges
Mouth	Fraser River
- location	Ruskin, British Columbia (on Mission-Maple Ridge boundary

The Stave River is a tributary of the Fraser, joining it at the boundary between the municipalities of Maple Ridge and Mission, about 35 kilometres (22 mi) east of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in the Central Fraser Valley region.

Blocked since the 1920s by two dams built by the BC Electric Railway at Stave Falls and one at Ruskin, the only free-flowing parts of the Stave today are the 3 kilometres (1.9 mi) between Ruskin Dam and the Fraser and the 45 kilometres (28 mi) from its source in Garibaldi Provincial Park to the head of Stave Lake. Prior to power development the total length of the river was c. 85 kilometres (53 mi).

The name Stave River was conferred in about 1828 by Hudson's Bay Company employees at Fort Langley, as the forests lining its banks were preferred for the production of staves used in the making of barrels for the export of fish. The native name for the river is forgotten, although modern-day Sto:lo and Kwantlen refer to it as Skayuks ("everyone died"), also the name given to one of three villages that were located in the delta marshlands of the lower reaches of the river at the time of non-native settlement (1870s onwards). The name is a reference to consequences of the successive smallpox plagues and other disease pandemics which destroyed the populations and cultures of the Fraser Valley.

...
Wikipedia