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Twelve Bridges and Miles of Muck - Early Roads and Taxes
- 1. “Twelve Bridges and Miles of Muck” - Early Roads and Taxes
- 2. “There is nothing there at present worthy of the name road….” Upper Valley Road 1920s
- 3. Roads & Taxes 1903-1950s: Early Road Improvements 1912-1948: Pemberton Express Adventures 1960s: The Pemberton Dust Committee 2011: The Highline Road Case 2012: The Leaning Grader Roads & Taxes Today
- 4. 1903 construction began Early Pemberton road work with William Hamill's team.
- 5. Robert Hutchinson – 1st Local Road Foreman 1909
- 6. James Punch- Foreman 1910 Mrs. Punch with children and dog
- 7. The Red Bridge – Group in 1916-1917 Left to right: Violet Harris, Lena Harris, Una Harris and Edith Harris, youngster- Verna Thompson.
- 8. Pemberton’s First Car Owned by Foley, Welch & Stewart (P.G.E.) and brought over the lakes on a barge. A 1914 McLaughlin Buick.
- 9. Portage Road Truck Group: On way to Anderson (?) Lake. Woman in tam, Adella (Mrs. "Sandy) Fowler; girl to right at group behind cab, Kay Ruddock; near boat's bow, Fraser girl; in front of her, Tommy and Edith Fowler.
- 10. 1920 – Foreman Olus Lee Government Road Truck 1930s(?) image donated by Fowler family
- 11. Miller Creek Bridge 1915 Vera Harris
- 12. Public works crew pulling brush across river for bank protection. Extreme right: Sandy Fowler, D. Morrison
- 13. Sandy Fowler – Foreman 1922-1948
- 14. 1920s-1950s Clockwise: 1) Caption on the back reads "Francis Joe & Co. in his "Flivver"" with a date of June, 1923, 2) 1920 - Pemberton Meadows, W.C. Green's car. Standing: W.C. Green; small boy is Dick Green, 3) Marjorie Elesko, Leon Keyes at Pemberton Station 1937, and 4) Meadows Road 1953 – Joe Antonelli photo.
- 15. Freight Train and Dirt Road 1956 Warner & Audrey Oberson collection
- 16. Pemberton Express Adventures 1920 - With R.H.E. Taylor at the wheel; his mother is in the back seat. Seated beside her is one of two Gardiner brothers, Harry and William. The second stands in the doorway. Their mother sits beside Mrs. Taylor.
- 17. Lobbying Vancouver Board of Trade members. View is looking south from near Leonard McNolty farm.
- 18. The Pemberton Dust Committee
- 19. The Highline Road Case
- 21. Roads & Taxes in BC Today Total length of paved roads in BC (2000): 23,710 km 2014 MOT Budget: Since 2005 $22 billion committed to improve and expand port, rail, road and airport facilities. 2012-2010 targets another $25 billion on Pacific Gateway. (Road improvements mentioned - Lower Mainland, Alberta connectors, Highway 97, Vancouver Island, Northern BC). Highway projects, the province spent a total of $690 million in 2011/12, $715 million in 2012/13, and $638 million in 2013/14. The government is proposing to spend $567 million on roads in 2014/15. The decrease in highway spending is due to the completion of the many Gateway Program highway projects in Metro Vancouver such as the South Fraser Perimeter Road (excluding the Port Mann/Highway 1 Project).
- 22. Road & Taxes Locally Area C 2015 Population: 3,512 including First Nations communities (2011 Census) Size: 5,570.39 square kilometers
Editor's Notes
- Welcome to T&T – Theme is Transportation. We researched some of the history of Roads & Taxes in the area for the Transportation Exhibit. Pemberton residents have been paying for the roads within the Pemberton Valley since the turn of the century through taxes, fees and levies. The coming of the railway saw an improvement in the local road system and as early as 1903 men began construction on a Valley Road. Early road foreman were challenged with creating roads through muddy bog, over rivers known for extreme changes in water levels, and around rocky slides. They had a very limited budget and demonstrated creativity in their engineering solutions. In the 1930’s, The Board of Trade began a lobbying effort to improve the local road system and to urge the government to bring a road from the south up to Pemberton. The local road conditions were a topic that dominated most gatherings of local residents. Bob Taylor, who owned and operated the Pemberton Express from 1919-58, helped with these early lobbying efforts. Today, local residents continue to lobby for road improvements in the district. The recent 2013 case regarding the Highline road, between local residents and the Province of B.C., is an example of these efforts.
- In 1903, $325 dollars were spent but an official soon reported that “there is nothing there at present worthy of the name road.” Local residents referred to the road as ‘The Trail’ and often chose to paddle to town in dug-out canoes. In the winter, snow often plugged the trail and the twisting track was so narrow until 1906 that no settler beyond the ‘Rockslide’ on the Ryan River owned a wagon or a mower.
- What We’re Going to Talk about
- By 1906 the Lillooet District provided residents with use of a grader, two spreading wagons, one horse roller, one engine and a sawmill to improve road works in the district.
- In 1909, sixteen years after the road was begun, settlers circulated a petition and asked that “the road up the valley be put in condition for wagon traffic”. This resulted in the hiring of the first local road foreman, Robert Hutchinson. The first big change was a diversion of the road from the banks of the Ryan River to its present route through the Miller property to avoid the ‘Rockslide’. This large project provided work for local men and work camps were established.
- In 1910, James Punch became the foreman. Punch built the bridge over the Lillooet River with Douglas Adie. The approach and two spans measured 186 feet and cost $1876. A few years later the bridge was painted red and became known as the Red Bridge and it used to cross the Lillooet River at the end of Pemberton Farm Road East near the junction of Meadows Road.
- In 1914, the road was continued from the Red Bridge to Mt. Currie and it followed the north bank of the Lillooet River. Before this improvement, residents from Mt. Currie could only travel to Pemberton at low water along the south bank of the river.
- 1914 – Railway arrives & roads to access station are needed. Maintenance dollars for roads fluctuated over the years.. In 1914 the P.G.E. obliterated sections of the old Portage Trail and laid ties and steel on the nice level stretches. Up to 1916 men continued to repair both the Anderson and Seton Lake trails.
- Until 1913 annual monies provided for the Portage Road were a few hundred dollars. By 1913, this amount increased to $2833. The Upper Valley road was allocated $7250.
- Olus Lee was the foreman in 1920 and had been an engineer in WW1. He arrived in Pemberton in 1912 with Jake Lokken and left with Lokken to enlist – when he returned he married Helen Dermody. The public works foreman always budgeted twice the amount Olus quoted for a bridge, not believing he could complete the work so cheaply. The result was that Lee built his bridges, but he also put an approach on each side, and usually these approaches were up to two miles in length. This is how most of the original muddy roads developed into good roads.
- Read Ben Cherry remembers about Olus & bridge building pg. 190 3rd paragraph.
- Ben Cherry pg. 190 4th paragraph “Few knew that besides maintaining road…river control…” to end of paragraph.
- Sandy Fowler was made foreman in 1922 and served until 1948. In the 1930’s, local residents lobbied for more road maintenance and equipment for road improvements. Locals were disgusted that they had to pay license fees on Dec 01st each year, when the road was usually impassable.
- Pg. 190 “Until the fifties…” to end of paragraph.
- Lack of transportation kept Pemberton from the mainstream of provincial life in the 1940’s and 50’s. Approximately 75 miles of roadway was available to local traffic and for these few miles the people paid the same insurance rates as people on the lower mainland. In the early 1950’s, gravelling and ditching of the Valley road had started, bit by bit and abolishing the worst of the mud holes. The road to D’arcy was widened and leveled.
- Bob Taylor operated the Pemberton Express from1919-1958. The Pemberton Express was a Ford Model-T and as Taylor explained, was a multi-purpose vehicle. He explains, “It was an ambulance, hearse and general transport business”. He describes his early driving experiences. “Twelve bridges to navigate, one mile of corduroy, and one lengthy bridge about 300 feet that had a habit of moving up and down or leaning sideways, depending on frost heave in winter and high water in summer. The road itself was about ten feet wide. In those days the P.G.E. trains arrived at 2am, so there was not much choice about night trips. He suggests that you imagine yourself ten miles from Pemberton in the dark, the temperature below 0, in this vehicle with a flat tire”.
- When Squamish celebrated its road link to Vancouver in 1958 the Pemberton Board of Trade planned to take a jeep caravan over the B.C. Electric ‘tote road’ and various logging roads to join the ceremonies at Squamish, and in spite of forest fires and woods closures the men did make the trip. The opening of Whistler as a ski resort in 1966 provided the pressure to extend the road 25miles to the north and by 1964 it was declared open – though only for the adventurous. But more about Hwy 99’s early years on August 18th.
- By the 1960’s heavy logging trucks were damaging the upper valley road. Clouds of dust thrown up by vehicles, especially heavy trucks, meant having to stop and wait for this dust to clear. Residents in the 1980’s formed the Pemberton Valley Dust Committee and successfully lobbied for the paving of the Meadows Road.
- In recent times, local residents challenged the government’s lack of funding for maintenance on the Highline road. The claim, initiated by Wolfgang Skutnik, stated that this route was a road by definition of Section 42 in the Transportation Act. He claimed that because taxes were collected for its construction and maintenance over the last century, the province needed to take responsibility for its continued maintenance. His claim was successful. In 2013, “the B.C. Supreme Court declared that the Douglas Trail Road between D'Arcy and Seton Portage - commonly known as Highline Road - is a provincial highway. In her decision dated for Thursday (Feb. 7), Justice Loryl D. Russell determined that the provincial government had previously spent money to maintain the road, and therefore should carry highway status. The ruling means that the province will be responsible for maintaining the 24-kilometre stretch of road and bringing it up to provincial standard”. Whistler Question, February 14, 2013
- This is a horse drawn leaning grader built by J.D. Adams & Co. On permanent loan from MOT. Adams invented the leaning wheel grader in the late 1800s due to the difficultly of working on the sloping side of a road. The blade is set at a fixed angle with leaning wheels. This principle has been a key feature of graders through to modern times. This item likely used in the Pemberton area. The museum also has the Ostman Cat on site which was used for road building and other improvement projects like dyke construction.
- Infrastructure funding has been volatile for the past ten years. Relative to the United States, the share of provincial expenditure on transportation, as a percentage of GDP, is low, on average 1.5%. Federal transfers for roadway expenditures in BC have been going down over the last decade which places more pressure on BC revenues and expenditures. http://www.sauder.ubc.ca/Faculty/Research_Centres/Centre_for_Transportation_Studies/~/media/Files/Faculty%20Research/OPLOG%20Division/OPLOG%20Publications/GILLEN/Building%20for%20the%20Future%20of%20British%20Columbia.ashx The Canadian Taxpayers Federation is raising concerns about the level of taxes on gasoline and diesel fuels in B.C., saying drivers in Vancouver now pay the second highest taxes on fuel, after Montreal. CTF federal director Gregory Thomas says consumers in Canada actually pay GST on the taxes they pay for fuel. In B.C. the sales tax is calculated after the motor fuel tax, carbon tax and federal excise tax are added to the price of the fuel. Those three taxes total 42 cents tax per liter in Greater Vancouver, 34 cents in Victoria, and 31 cents across the rest of B.C. – all before the GST is added on. "The result has been governments collecting an extra $1.6 billion from unsuspecting motorists," says Thomas. Thomas also also took aim at tax schemes designed to fund transit projects, citing Vancouver as an example that residents of other cities should worry about. "In Vancouver, working families pay $551 extra, no matter how much money they earn. The further they need to drive to get to work or their kids to soccer games, the bigger the tax grab. It’s not a fair way to pay for multi-billion dollar transit projects.“ http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/taxes-on-top-of-gas-taxes-outrage-taxpayers-federation-1.1367251 MOT budget 2014 http://www.bcbudget.gov.bc.ca/2014/sp/pdf/ministry/tran.pdf MOT budget 2015-2016 https://www.th.gov.bc.ca/publications/ministry_reporting/Service_Plans/2013-14-2015-16_SP.pdf South Fraser Blog on MOT budget 2015-2016: http://sfb.nathanpachal.com/2014/02/bc-budget-2014-roads-and-transit.html
- From Local Government Act: The longstanding powers of B.C. municipalities to possess local public roads was strengthened in a Community Charter provision granting them full title to the roads. Other roads in unincorporated areas and provincial highways within municipalities (called arterial highways) are the responsibility of the transportation ministry. Regional districts are not empowered to possess public roads but a form of regional road system was introduced in 1998, when TransLink was established and empowered to designate a Greater Vancouver regional road network, set regional road standards, finance major road development, and manage transportation systems in cooperation with the municipalities. The municipalities continue to own the roads. General plans for major municipal roads must be included in official community plans and, “to the extent that these are regional matters,” regional growth strategies must include transportation plans. History teaches us that local road improvements always required lobbying by local residents to compel provincial government investment in the area due to the small population. Road foremen in the past had to be innovative to solve local road issues on small budgets; the same can be said of the challenges today. The recent Pemberton Festival & Ironman traffic management plans, and the improvements to sections of the Pemberton Meadows Rd (bike lane) and Portage Roads largely come about through political pressure and local voices. Highway 99 was upgraded as part of Olympic Legacy funding in the last decade as was the Duffy Rd.to the north. Nonetheless, roads in Area C like the Highline can take many years to resolve as these roads fall under provincial jurisdiction. The population in the Lower Mainland is set to increase 1 million people in the next decade. Rural areas like Pemberton, Mt. Currie, and D’arcy will have to continue lobbying efforts to ensure local roads are not left behind as MOT focuses on the Pacific Gateway Project through to 2020. Early settlers would tell us – road improvements and whether they happen or not, is up to us.