Doré River

British Columbia. River: Fraser River drainage
Flows NE into Fraser River, NW of McBride
53.3333 N 120.2 W — Map 93H/8 — GoogleGeoHack
Earliest known reference to this name is 1910
Name officially adopted in 1965
Official in BCCanada

Doré is French for “golden.” The former Fifty Mile Creek, according to trapper Jack Damon, was given its name by a Norwegian prospector named Olson, “who found a few colors in his pan, so he called it doré, golden. He was a Norwegian Frenchman.”

Around 1911 Louis Knutson “bought the trapline on the Dore River, but I only made one trip and it was no good, it was all trapped out. Some of the boys had been in there.”

The name appears on the “Preliminary Map of the Canadian Rocky Mountains between Jarvis Pass and Yellowhead Pass” (Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, 1915), showing the route followed by Mary Lenore Jobe Akeley [1878–1966] in August 1914, with guide Donald “Curly” Phillips [1884–1938].

Doré is also another name for the Dolly Varden, but although that fish is found in this river, the name is not common in this area.

Locally the name of the river is pronounced “door.”
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References:

  • Wheeler, Marilyn. The Robson Valley Story. McBride, B.C.: Robson Valley Story Group, 1979, p. 151
  • Wheeler, Marilyn. The Robson Valley Story. McBride, B.C.: Robson Valley Story Group, 1979
  • Jobe Akeley, Mary Lenore [1878–1966]. “Mt. Kitchi: A New Peak in the Canadian Rockies.” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Volume 47, No. 7 (1915):481-497, Map follows p. 496. JSTOR
  • Personal correspondence. , Jack Damon, ca. 1975
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