Observation Cars, Mining Camps, and Settler Life in 1897
Mining camps become a part of the everyday sights for the Wright family as they experience the excitement of the gold rush and travel on Harrison Lake in British Columbia, Canada.
This post is all about May and Harold Wright’s letters home about domestic labour, time on Harrison Lake and the gold mining activity around them in 1897.
Agassiz, British Columbia in May 1897
By May 1897, Agassiz was still a small but steadily developing farming community in the Fraser Valley. Settlers cleared land, raised cattle, and worked long hours to make marginal acreage productive. Seasonal flooding, muddy sloughs, and unpredictable mountain weather shaped daily life.
Though modest in size, the settlement was increasingly influenced by outside forces such as new arrivals seeking opportunity, expanding railway connections, and increasing excitement over mining developments nearby.
Close by, Harrison Lake had become a centre of gold mining speculation. Prospectors travelled up the lake in sailing boats and steamers loaded with provisions, hoping to secure profitable claims. Small mining camps appeared along the shoreline, their fires visible from farms across the valley.
The excitement drew transient workers and investors into the region, adding pressure to a community already balancing agriculture, hop yard labour, and service industries that included the Chinese laundries and workers who played a crucial role in sustaining everyday life in Agassiz.
At the same time, the Canadian Pacific Railway anchored Agassiz to the wider province. Built in 1893, the CPR station connected the settlement to Vancouver and beyond, carrying passengers, cattle, supplies, and mining hopefuls. Work trains passed regularly, tunnels required constant maintenance, and special excursion trains offered rare opportunities for shopping trips to the city. In 1897, the railway was more than transportation. it was the artery that sustained settlement, speculation, and survival in the Fraser Valley.
The Canadian Pacific Railway and Observation Cars
Railway traffic was a constant presence in the Wright family’s daily life at Hazeley. In her May 1, 1897 letter, May casually notes that “the evening train has just passed with an observation car on, the first this year.” Such a passing detail reveals how closely settlers tracked railway movement.
By the late 1890s, the railway was transforming Agassiz from an isolated farming settlement into a connected node within provincial networks of trade and migration. Observation cars, excursion fares, work trains, and freight traffic all signaled a community increasingly tied to broader economic currents even as daily life remained rooted in agriculture and domestic labour.
From Harrison Hot Springs
From the 1897 edition of the Province Newspaper, another account of travel around Agassiz and Harrison Hot Springs.
Harrison Lake Mining Camps and Gold Speculation
If the railway connected Agassiz to the wider province, the growing activity on Harrison Lake brought excitement directly to its doorstep. By May 1897, gold mining speculation had intensified along the lake’s shoreline. Prospectors and investors organized expeditions carrying a ton of provisions at a time, sailing northward in boats and steamers toward newly surveyed claims.
Harrison Lake Circa 1900
May describes accompanying the Smiths part of the way up the lake as a mining party departed an outing that underscores how closely ordinary settlers observed, and occasionally participated in, the rush of speculation. Captain Moore, Captain Cholmondeley, Mr. Slade, and Mr. Brown set out equipped for a prolonged stay, prepared to establish or expand camps that would operate through the summer months.
From Hazeley, the effects of mining were both distant and immediate. A camp fire burned visibly across the water at night, and the sound of blasting echoed through the valley. Yet farming routines continued. Cattle still required tending, church meetings were held, clothing needed sewing, and river levels were watched closely. Mining layered optimism and risk onto everyday life it did not replace it.
Letters
May’s Letter to Mother-May 1, 1897
Harold’s Letter to Mother – May, 1897
Hazeley Agassiz, B.C.
Dear Mother,
I got your letter nearly a week ago but I have not had time to answer until today. I expect you are quite right that I have not worked as hard as I ought to have, but the only excuse I have had is that up till now the whole thing has been most disheartening and it is very hard to get up early and work all day and then feel that you have made nothing, but I promise you I will try and do better, all this week up I have been up before Cecil so I have made a start.
I am glad to say we have at last been settled with for the cattle. Cholmondeley’s partener came down here on Saturday and payed us and took the rest of the cattle away. He (Cholomondley’s partener Broadbent) stopped with us for two days, he is an Englishman and a Gentleman, he is only 20 and very like Jack, he told me when he went away he had never been so well looked after in his life, he ought to have been pleased as both mornings he was here I got up early and made hot roles for breakfast and took him hot-water, cleaned his boots, brushed his cloths and on Saturday when he went down to the prairie with Cecil and got soaked crossing a slough. I washed and ironed all his things quite as well as a Chinaman would have done them.
I am quite proud of my cooking now, as I can make cake and I realy think my bread and roles are better than May’s.
Yesturday Broadbent and I went down onto the the prairie and took all his cattle up to the station to be sent away, we had an awful time as ____ we all right back under the mountain. We had a swim three sloughs and Broadbent had never swan an hour in his life, so we took off all our clothes except our boots and had to ride all over the place like that, the cattle were very bad to drive and it took us about 5 hours to get up to the station.
In father’s last letter he proposed that I should go and work out for a time. I think it might be a very good thing and I shall look out for a job. I must stop now to good bye with heaps of love from,
Harold
P.S. I really am going to work hard so do not work about me H.P.W.
May’s Letter to Mother – May 8, 1897
Hazeley Agassiz, B.C. May 16, 1897
My dearest Mother,
Dorothy’s photographs came a few days ago, I like the full length one best, but they are both good, she looks a good bit bigger. We have had a good deal of wet weather lately, it was fine this morning, but has been pouring all afternoon. Last Saturday they put on a special train from Agassiz to Vancouver, it starts about seven in the morning and gets back about seven at night, stopping in Vancouver 6 1/2 hours, it is to run once a week, but the fares are no cheaper &.4.10 runs a great deal to pay, for one’s day shopping.
There is a mining camp on the water opposite us, we can see their fire at night, but that is all so it must be about five miles away, we hear them blasting sometimes. The work train has been down the tunnel for a long time now, it passes here several times a day as it has to go up to the station every time a train goes through.
Mr. George is supposed to be working for Burkitt for about a month, he was there one day & then the rain came & he came home again, no one works in the rain on a farm in this country.
Vance the butcher, he’s gone away for a month, so we can’t get any meat, it is a great bother, Burkitt is going to kill a sheep to-day & we are going to take one hind quarter.
The “Jubilee” hymn came about two das ago, they seem nice, but I haven’t been able to try them over yet, if I get in in time to-morrow I will try them before the service. There was a vestry meeting last night to which the boys should have gone, but did not; Cecil did not go because he heard that Mr. Croucher intended to make him church warden.I went up to Agassiz Thursday to get some help in making a blouse.
There really is so much I didn’t know how ____. The river is, not raising, I believe, there is fresh snow on Cheam & the mountains round, & just a sprinkle on the very top of the mountain in front of the homes.
Ever your affectionate daughter,
May Wright.
Why Letters Like These Matter to British Columbia History
The Hazeley Letters offer a rare and unusually detailed record of everyday settler life in Agassiz during the late nineteenth century. Unlike official records, newspapers, or promotional literature, these private family letters capture how ordinary people experienced migration, work, weather, community, and celebration in real time.
Importantly, the Wrights were not prominent figures. They were neither politicians nor major landowners. Their significance lies precisely in their ordinariness. Through descriptions of walking miles along muddy railway tracks, sewing worn clothing, hosting neighbours for tea, and speculating about mining ventures, the letters illuminate how communities functioned at a human scale in the Fraser Valley.
Preserved today at the Agassiz-Harrison Museum & Archives, the Hazeley Letters survived only narrowly. Their survival allows historians like myself to reconstruct aspects of local history that would otherwise remain invisible. By transcribing and contextualizing these letters, we gain insight not only into the Wright family’s experiences, but into the broader rhythms of settler life in British Columbia in 1897.
The letters reproduced in this post are transcribed verbatim from original manuscripts held at the Agassiz-Harrison Museum & Archives. Spelling, grammar, and punctuation have been preserved to maintain the integrity of the original documents. Editorial introductions and historical context have been added to assist modern readers and to situate the letters within the broader social and historical landscape of nineteenth-century British Columbia.
This post forms part of an ongoing research and transcription project examining the Hazeley Letters and the Wright family’s settlement in the Fraser Valley.
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