“Athabasca” is from the Cree language and is said to mean “an area of grass or reeds.” The name likely refers to the muddy delta of the river where it flows into Lake Athabasca.

In 1790, the name of the river was recorded as “Great Arabuska.” In 1801 it was labelled “Athapasco.” The Arrowsmith map of 1802 shows a slight variation as “Arthapescow.” In the late eighteenth century, the Dunne-za people who lived along its banks called it the “Elk River,” and it appears as “Elk River” on Alexander Mackenzie’s map dated 1801.

David Thompson and Peter Fidler, who explored the middle section of the river in 1799–1800, both referred to it in their journals as the “Athabasca.”

In 1820, George Simpson, the governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company, referred to it as the “Athabasca or Elk River.” Today, local residents also refer to the feature as “Big River,” the Cree version of which was in use in 1880 when George Mercer Dawson labelled it as “Athabasca River or Mus-ta-hi-sî-pî.”

A Native camp, Tête Jaune Cache area, 1910s.
Valemount & Area Museum

The Raush River was originally known as the Shuswap River, after the natives living in the area at first white contact. There was a Shuswap settlement at Tête Jaune Cache. The Robson Valley marked their northern limits.

These Shuswap Indians of the Texqakallt band of the upper North Thompson River were the earliest known inhabitants of the upper reaches of the Fraser River. They were almost completely nomadic. They dressed only in marmot skins and slept on the open snow with their feet toward a central fire. At times, they constructed bark teepees. Lodges and fish drying racks were constructed in prime salmon fishing territory at the confluence of the McLennan and Fraser Rivers in the vicinity of what is now Tete Jaune Cache. As well as salmon from the Fraser, trout were reportedly taken from Yellowhead Lake. They hunted bighorn sheep, mountain goats, moose, marmots, and other small mammals and birds. They also relied on edible plants in the area, especially berries.

In his “Notes on the Cariboo Range” of 1925, Munday wrote, “The local name of the Big Shuswap conflicts with the Shuswap River further south and appears on recent government maps as Raushwap or Rausch River (from Riviere au Shuswap). Kiwa Creek is known locally as Little Shuswap.”

Cariboo Mountains

The name Cariboo is derived from the Algonquian Indian word xalibu, meaning “pawer” or “scratcher,” referring to the North American reindeer. The name was first applied to the goldfield area around Quesnel and Barkerville, where caribou were once abundant. The name goes back to at least 1861, near the beginning of the gold rush, when Governor James Douglas of the Colony of British Columbia used the name Cariboo to describe the area in dispatches to Britain.

This name appears on B.C. Surveyor General Joseph William Trutch’s 1871 “Map of British Columbia to the 56th Parallel North Latitude.”

The name “Cariboo Mountains” was officially adopted in 1918, not “Cariboo Range” as labelled on Bowman’s 1887 map of the Cariboo Mining District.

Raymond T. Zillmer made a number of explorations in the Cariboo Mountains in the 1930s and 40s and wrote articles about the mountaineering history in the Canadian Alpine Journal and the American Alpine Journal.

The Cariboo Range is important in the development of Canada. When the Canadian Pacific Railway considered the matter of its route across the continental divide, it tentatively selected Yellow- head Pass, for it offered the easiest crossing. But that decision was frustrated by the Cariboo Mountains. A practical railroad route led from Yellowhead Pass to the Fraser River and down the Fraser until the Cariboo Range was reached, about 50 miles west of the pass. Here, from an elevation of 2400 ft., at Tête Jaune Cache, the Cariboo Range rises in a very short distance to as high as 11,750 ft., the height of Mt. Sir Wilfred Laurier, the highest peak of the entire Interior Ranges of British Columbia. If a route could not be found across the range, a long detour to the northwest or to the south was necessary—the routes now followed by the Canadian National Railway. So from 1871 to 1874 four well- equipped expeditions sought a route across the Cariboo Mountains. But they found that only high glacial passes were available. So the route across Yellowhead Pass was abandoned in favor of the more southerly route now used by the Canadian Pacific Railway.