When Walter Butler Cheadle [1835–1910] passed this way in 1863, he named these falls on the south side of Moose Lake “Rockingham Falls.” Cheadle’s companion, William Wentworth Fitzwilliam Milton [1839–1877], was related to the Rockingham family. (The third Earl Fitzwilliam married Lady Anne Watson-Wentworth, eldest daughter of Charles Watson-Wentworth, second Marquess of Rockingham, Earl of Malton, who was Prime Minister of England from 1765 to 1766, and again in 1782.)

On some maps they are called “Rainbow Falls,” and the provincial parks branch calls them “Thunder Falls.” The creek that the falls are on is still called “Rockingham.”

Named after Rockingham Falls.

A name chosen in March, 1962, after a contest held by the Dunster Farmers’ Institute. The second and third choices were Echo Valley and Long Valley. The name was officially recognized in 1976.

The Robson River was called “Grand River” in early journals. Its confluence with the Fraser was called the Grand Forks of the Fraser, a translation of the voyageur name Grande Fourche.

Pierre Bostonais dit “Tête Jaune” [d. 1827] had his fur cache somewhere in the vicinity of the Grand Forks, not at the present Tête Jaune Cache, which is near the mouth of the McLennan River.

“Between Berg and Adolphus lakes lies Robson Pass,” wrote Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] during the 1911 Alpine Club of Canada–Smithsonian Robson Expedition. “The pass is a shingle flat, rising gently to the ice-fall of the Robson Glacier, by the outflow from which it has been formed.”

After making a survey for the Alberta-British Columbia Boundary Commission in 1924, Wheeler wrote: “Robson Pass, 5,440 feet in altitude, is one of great technical interest owing to the fluctuations of the watershed.… The broad morainal flat at the summit of the pass is so nearly of a level that the outflow from Robson Glacier has been known to change the line of watershed.”

In 1917, while serving in the Canadan Army Medical Corps in France, George R. B. Kinney [1872–1961] wrote to Arthur Hinks, the secretary of the Royal Geographical Society in London, that he would be pleased to deliver a lecture on mountaineering in the Canadian Rockies, illustrated by “100 choice colored lantern slides, second to none (by report), and taken from my own negatives.… Mine are the original photographs taken of these hither to unexplored regions, and names like ‘Berg Lake,’ ‘Tumbling Glacier,’ ‘Robson Glacier,’ ‘Mt. Rearguard,’ ‘the Helmet,’ and ‘the Extinguisher’ that now have a permanency, were my suggestions.” [1]

Kinney accompanied Arthur Philemon Coleman [1852–1939] on his 1907 and 1908 mountaineering expeditions to Mount Robson, and claimed to have ascended Robson in 1909.

“Between Rearguard and Titkana Peak, leading from the wonderful snow-filled cirque, seen in its entirety from our station on the Lynx Range, flows the Robson Glacier,” wrote Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] during the 1911 Alpine Club of Canada–Smithsonian Robson Expedition. “It describes a circular sweep around Rearguard, and, though much crevassed in its upper reaches, it generally easy to travel over.” [2]

Charles Doolittle Walcott, who visited the area in 1912, referred to Robson Glacier as “the great Hunga (Chief) glacier.” [3]

A cirque is a deep, steep-walled, bowl-shaped indentation in a mountain side.

Origin of the name unknown.

Near a bend in the Doré River.