Horsefly Lake

The salmon found the gold first. Sockeye spawning in the Horsefly River churned up the gravel and left the nuggets lying in plain sight.

In the summer of 1859 a party led by a First Nations guide known as Long Baptiste picked up around a hundred ounces in a week. It was the first gold of the Cariboo Gold Rush, three years ahead of Billy Barker's strike at Williams Creek, though at least four separate groups found gold on this river that year and who arrived first is still argued. When the easy ground gave out the miners pushed north to Quesnel Forks and Barkerville. The settlement here stayed small, and went by Harper's Camp until 1921.

The fish are still the point. The Horsefly carries one of the significant sockeye runs of the Fraser system, and the river is closed to placer staking because of it. The gold the salmon uncovered is off limits now, on account of the salmon.