canoebase.com - North/Black/Liard River Canoe Trip, Exploration History

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Yukon Territory - North/Black/Liard River Canoe Trip, Exploration and Area History

From "Fur Trade and Exploration, Opening the Far Northwest 1821- 1852" by Theodore J Karamanski, University of Oklahoma Press, 1983. (Start page 94)

In the early days the Liard above the Fort Nelson River was referred to as the "West Branch" of the Liard, while the Fort Nelson River was the "East Branch" of the Liard.

On 28 June, 1831, John McLeod (pronounced then as "McCloud") an explorer/trader for the Hudson's Bay Company started up the Liard River from the town now called Fort Simpson on the Mackenzie River in NWT with eight other men and his pet dog. This was an expedition to find the source of the Liard. He would be the first non Indian known to get very far above the little village of Fort Liard which is a hundred or so river miles (160 km) above Fort Simpson. The Indians in the area said that travel on the Liard through the canyon section upstream of the Fort was impossible. McLeod's small group used one North canoe to carry themselves and all supplies. These boats were typically birchbark, about 25 feet long, 4 feet wide, and about 24 inches deep.

It took them a while, of course, as they often stopped for a few days to rest and hunt to resupply food. They worked their way up the Grand Canyon of the Liard, portaging a few times, to Cranberry Rapids, the farthest upstream large rapids, on 8 August. Above here are more rapids, but this is also the start of the Liard plains where much of the river is quite calm. The animals were almost tame, so unused were they to human presence. On 14 August McLeod's group reached and named the Dease River. About 18 August, 1831, they missed what's known as the Liard today and turned up the much larger Frances River, thinking it was the Liard. They went on to a large lake which McLeod named Simpson Lake after his boss, George Simpson, the head of the HBC in Canada. They turned around and headed back towards Fort Simpson, but two of the French Canadian paddlers were killed in one of the rapids in the Grand Canyon on the way home.

Nine years later, in the spring of 1840, Robert Campbell was ordered By George Simpson back to the area with seven other men to explore routes to the Yukon River and other Rivers in Alaska. A few trappers between McLeod and Campbell had discovered where the Liard meets the Frances River, but had been calling the latter the "North Branch" of the Liard. Campbell also saw the actual Liard/Frances confluence, named the larger river the Frances, and then renamed as Frances Lake what McLeod had called Simpson Lake -- both after Lady Frances, George Simpson's wife. Like McLeod, maybe Thompson had learned that flattering one's superior doesn't hurt advancement. There is still a Simpson Lake in the area, a much smaller one drained by a small creek coming into the Frances River downstream of Frances Lake.

An HBC fur trading post was built a year later on Frances Lake by Thompson and maintained until the spring of 1851, when it was burned by Indians. The area was just not profitable fur country, mainly because of competition from the Chilkat Indian tribe farther south, rather than the lack of furs in the area at the time.

The above account only covers the bottom 30 miles of the run. I haven't found any references to actual travel on the Liard above the Frances yet, much less the Black and North Rivers, the main focus of this Web site section. Probably have to hit the Watson Lake or Whitehorse Library in order to find much. Also want to find the source of the name Liard. Where did the names Black and North come from? Anyone ever living on the system? Some First Nation history of the area. Who built the cabin complex at the south end of Fire Lake? Who's James Botti who built the trappers cabin on Black Lake? Mining exploration history? (Some in the Columbia Gold Mining Web site) Who built/owns/uses the cabins on the Liard below the Black mouth? A little more history of the towns of Watson Lake and Upper Liard.

Watson Lake's first white settler was Frank Watson, an Englishman heading for the Klondike gold fields in 1998. He never made it to Dawson, instead married and settled as a prospector and trapper by the shore of the lake that was to eventually bear his name. Ray Patterson has some info in "Trail to the Interior" Airport construction in 1941, followed by the Alaska Highway in 1942, lead to the formation of an accomodations and supply center that grew into the town of Watson Lake. Watson Lake today averages about 1750 population and serves as the Alaska Highway's gateway to the Yukon Territory. Patterson's book also has some info on this subject.

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