Canadian Pacific Railway surveyor Henry Purden Bell [c. 1841–1910] passed the winter of 1875-76 surveying the Fraser River above Fort George. Born in County Atrim, Ireland, Bell was a civil engineer and pioneer surveyor and miner in British Columbia. It’s possible this mountain was named after him, although the name doesn’t appear on early maps.

Some say that Bell Mountain was named in the 1960s because of its resemblance to a bell. The BC Geographical Names office says the name refers to its shape. It was also known as Mount Baldy.

In 1988, McBride Village Council received a development proposal for a ski hill on the mountain, to be called “Belle.” Council endorsed the historic spelling “Bell” in 1992, but as of 2020, a sign for “Belle Mountain Ski Area” appears at the foot of Bell Mountain Road.

The pass was named by members of the expedition of Mary Lenore Jobe Akeley [1878–1966] and Donald “Curly” Phillips [1884–1938] to Mount Kitchi (Mount Sir Alexander) in 1914.

From Jones Pass we cut our way through dense woods down a steep declivity to broad open muskeg on the West Branch of the Jack Pine. After traveling about six miles through this meadow we came to a low pass, 5,300 feet, filled with beaver dams and houses. We named this pass Beaver Dam Pass. It separates Fraser and Peace waters.

“The name is due to evidence of beaver-dams and houses seen at the time of their exploration in 1914,” wrote boundary surveyor Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945]. “No signs of beavers were now seen around the small tarn close to the summit of the pass on the Alberta side of the watershed, or in the small stream flowing from it. They seem to have either been trapped out or to have left the locality.” Beaverdam Pass was a camera station on the survey, which worked through the Yellowhead Pass in 1917.

The first thing [Bill and Mort Teare] heard on reaching the settlements was that the Yellowhead Pass was the route finally selected by the survey [for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway.
Not in the least discouraged, they went to work trapping that winter and snaring wild horses for their pack-train, and when the snow was off the mountains, they were at it again, this time working the side streams of the Fraser valley. On the Beaver, they had located an enormous ledge of quartz, and it was to look at this ledge that we had come.

— Washburn 1910 [1]

Surveyor and Alpine Club of Canada president Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] wrote of the 1911 Alpine Club of Canada–Smithsonian Robson Expedition:

The wide valley of the Big Smoky could be seen for many miles and, between Mt. Bess and the great white mountain, a large tributary valley which leads across the Continental Divide at its head to the Beaver River, a tributary of the Fraser. Donald Phillips, who, with Konrad Kain, spent part of the past winter (1911-12) trapping and exploring in the locality, writes me: “We did a lot of exploring this winter up in that country and found two more passes to the Stony River, but they are too rough at present to go over with horses. We also discovered two passes from the Smoky to the Beaver River, that flows into the Fraser. The Beaver River is about forty miles long.”

— Wheeler 1911 [2]

A bastion is a projecting part of a fortification, consisting of an earthwork in the form of an irregular pentagon. The feature was named by the Alberta-British Columbia Boundary Commission 1921.

Roy Barrett’s name appears on a 1907 list of firefighters at Cranberry Lake (Valemount). In 1916, Swift Creek (railway point) had its first official wedding, when Barrett married a half-sister to Minnie Gordon. Barrett was a contractor who in the 1920s removed much of the timber on the hills of Swift Creek, overlooking the village of Valemount. He moved to Calgary or Kamloops around 1924. “After that it was reported he had disappeared and he was never heard from again,” according to Marion Dahlberg, whose family came to Valemount in 1919.

The road is probably named after Regina-born Robert Barnes (1907–1971) who married Gladys Jeck of McBride in 1945. In 1947 they moved to the vicinity of McBride. Barnes served in the Royal Canadian Ordinance Corps from 1941 to 1946. He was a member of the Royal Canadian Legion, and worked on the Canadian National Railway

Calgary-born Frank Barnes (b. 1928) came to Crescent Spur in 1955 to manage the Nance Lumber Company’s planer mill. After the mill closed in 1965, Barnes logged, operated a sawmill, and contracted road building and land clearing.