The name “Leather Pass” appears to have been first used on the 1859 Arrowsmith map of British Columbia, the source of the name likely being the Royal Engineers, who were then conducting surveys in other parts of the colony. This name was frequently used in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s.

This pass, known by the several names of the Leather, Jasper House, Cowdung Lake, and Yellow Head Pass, had been formerly used by the voyageurs of the Hudson’s Bay Company as a portage from the Athabasca to the Fraser, but had long been abandoned on account of the numerous casualties which attended the navigation of the latter river.

— Milton and Cheadle, 1865 (1)

From 1826 to 1853, the Hudson’s Bay Company intermittently used the Yellowhead Pass to transport leather and grease from the Saskatchewan District to New Caledonia, in the interior of present-day British Columbia. In terms of provisions, New Caledonia was the poorest district in the entire fur trade. As an early trader put it, “New Caledonia being nearly altogether destitute of large animals both the Natives and Traders live entirely upon Fish.” Leather, principally dressed moose skins, and to a lesser extent buffalo skins, was used in its various forms in New Caledonia as the principal article of trade with the Natives, and by the fur traders themselves for shoes, clothes, pack-cords, snowshoes, tents, window parchment and a variety of other purposes.

The pass was usually referred to as the route or portage via Tête Jaune Cache. On a few occasions in the 1820s, the officer in charge of New Caledonia referred to the route as “the Leather track,” but this term encompassed the entire distance between Fort George and Jasper House. There is no record of any trader of the period ever calling the pass the Leather Pass.