Barry SALES
Special to the Tribune
Perhaps no one single person was more involved in the early development and improvement of the Cariboo region of B.C. than Peter Curran Dunlevy. He was a miner, a businessman, a developer, a rancher, an investor and a true entrepreneur.
He was born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania on Oct. 23, 1834, one of five children, to Jeremiah and Rose Dunlevy. The family was quite well-to-do, and young Peter received a good education along with a thorough grounding in good business practices. In 1855, at the age of 21, he made his way to the Weather River district of California, where he opened a business to purchase gold from the miners there. It was there also that he met and became fast friends with four young gold seekers and business opportunists.
However, the California gold rush was just coming to an end, so in 1857, Dunlevy and his friends moved northwards, following rumours of gold strikes and new deals to be made until they arrived in B.C. just as the Fraser River gold rush was hitting its stride.
Spring of 1858 found Dunlevy at Yale, where he formalized his partnership with his friends - Jim Sellers, a tall, brawny frontiersman from Texas, Ira Crow, a Californian miner and excellent prospector, Thomas Menefee, a good-natured jokester and speculator from Kentucky; and Tom Moffitt, a card sharp and enthusiastic gold hunter from Indiana. This group would remained friends, with varying partnership arrangements and shared business interests for the rest of their lives. It was always Peter Dunlevy, however, who was the acknowledged leader and driving force within the group.
During the Fraser River rush, the five men worked the big sand and gravel bars, always moving upriver and checking out the tributary creeks and streams. By the early spring of 1858, they were sluicing at the mouth of the Chilcotin River, when a young Shuswap man walked into their camp. He was Tomaah, a son of Chief Lolol for the Tk’emlups First Nation, and he was employed as a guide and a runner by the Hudson’s Bay Company. After getting to know each other, Tomaah opened up a little, telling the five white men that he knew of a little river east where there were many gold nuggets the size of the beans in their cooking pot.
Needless to say, the partners were very interested. They asked if Tomaah could lead them to that river, and when he agreed, they arranged to meet him on the outskirts of a big First Nations gathering at Lac La Hache some 16 days later. In the meantime, Dunlevy and his friends hastened down to Kamloops to re-provision and to hire two axe men to help cut a trail through the bush. Two weeks later, Tomaah met the Dunlevy party at Lac La Hache as promised, but the HBC needed him, so he brought along a friend, Long Baptiste, a Carrier man from the Fort Alexandria area. Long Baptiste, who knew the area even better than Tomaah, agreed to take the group to the gold bearing river.
It was a gruelling journey to the northeast from Lac La Hache. They followed a route which roughly parallels the 108 Mile and Spout Lake Roads, past Spout Lake, Moffat Lake, and the McIntosh Lakes, along Moffat Creek to the Horsefly River. It rained for much of the ordeal and they were plagued with mosquitoes and other biting insects. The river was high and roaring along, but as soon as they arrived, the men started digging into its banks, and quickly found several nuggets. This was mid-June of 1859, and this strike precipitated the great Cariboo Gold Rush, (There are some other accounts of gold on the Horsefly River, and the question of which group arrived first is sometimes disputed. What cannot be questioned is that Dunlevy’s party was one of the first groups of white prospectors on the Horsefly River in 1859.
Dunlevy and his friends became wealthy men because of this discovery. Except for Ira Crow, who preferred to continue prospecting for and finding gold, the other four partners began branching out into other business ventures. Thomas Menefee went into the packing business, buying and operating a string of 30 pack horses between Lytton and Keithley Creek before purchasing the Missioner Creek farm and roadhouse at Williams Lake in 1861. The other three purchased a roadhouse at Beaver Lake, located at the junction of several trails to Quesnel and Fraser Rivers, refurbishing it, opening a store and trading post, and developing a farm there. Dunlevy operated the store and kept the books for the whole venture, Sellers ran the roadhouse and Moffitt looked after the saloon and the gambling tables.
This arrangement worked out so well and proved to be so profitable that in 1862, the consortium acquired another roadhouse at Mud Lake (now known as McLeese Lake), on the junction of the main north-south HBC Brigade Trail and the Palmer Trail heading east to the gold fields. There they repeated the process, expanding the stopping house, establishing another store and trading post, and starting a farm. In the meantime, on the recommendation of Ira Crow, they were also stacking claims and speculating in land purchased at the rich Antler Creek gold strike.
It was also in 1862 that Dunlevy pre-empted and purchased a large tract of land about two miles north of Soda Creek. This would become one of the most productive and profitable farms in the Cariboo. It became known as the Dunlevy Ranch, a spread of over 1,000 acres which still continues in operation today. On this property, Dunlevy built and opened a roadhouse, but as Soda Creek grew, this roadhouse was repurposed into Dunlevy’s personal residence.
In 1863, Dunlevy commissioned local log builder George Hendricks to construct a new hotel, saloon, and store in the Soda Creek townsite. This was the Exchange Hotel, erected right next to the Colonial Hotel, and competing with it for business. The Exchange was a large 40-foot by 80-foot structure with two full storeys, and it was unique in that none of the quest room windows faced the street. Later on, the Barnard’s Express Company, the famous BX stage line, located their offices in the hotel and a large barn and livery stable was added at the back. The Soda Creek post office also had a small office in the Exchange.
The hotel business was very successful for Dunlevy and his partners. He focused on operating his farm and managing the store. Thomas Menefee and Tom Moffitt ran the hotel and the saloon. Jim Sellers remained at the Beaver Lake roadhouse, while Ira Crow continued to be involved in their mining interests, although he too established a farm near Soda Creek and helped out with the hotel on occasion.
As was a common practice of the time, around 1862 Dunlevy took a First Nations woman from the Fort Alexandria area as his country wife, and together they had a least three children. The family lived in the roadhouse residence on the Dunlevy Ranch. Later, in 1875, he married a white woman, Jennie Huston of Victoria. He was 41 years old and she was 21. She lived in a house newly built for her near the Exchange Hotel in Soda Creek, while his first family remained in the ranch house some two miles away. With Jennie, he fathered five more children.
For about 30 years, from the late 1860s until the later 1890s, Dunlevy, sometimes with one or more of his partners and sometimes on his own, branched out into several business enterprises throughout B.C. These included a chain of nine independent trading posts/stores in the Cariboo and Omineca regions; gold mines and related businesses in the Cariboo, Omineca and Cassiar areas; developing and building two railway lines, one on Vancouver Island and one in the Nelson region; investing in hydraulic mining at Horsefly and the Bullion Pit; and becoming a principal stock holder in the Coal Harbour land syndicate in Vancouver to name a few. He earned a reputation of being one of the province’s leading businessmen.
By the end of the 19th century, with age becoming a factor, Dunlevy entered into semi retirement of sorts, closing down some businesses, divesting himself of others, and consolidating his finances. He spent his last decade focusing on his store, hotel and ranching operation. He passed away at his home in Soda Creek in October of 1904, just six days shy of his 70th birthday. At that time of his death, he still had significant business interests all through B.C. He was buried at the St. Joseph’s Mission cemetery just southwest of Williams Lake.
In his obituary, it was written that “Mr. Dunlevy witnessed great changes which brought about modern development and was active among business men whose labours wrought present day conditions. Success attended his efforts, and he won not only a comfortable competence but also a good name among his many friends and acquaintances.” Peter Curran Dunlevy was a visionary, a mover and a shaker, and a man whose actions greatly influenced the shaping and building of Canada’s young westernmost province.
In preparing this column, I relied upon the writings of Branwen Patenaude (Trails to Gold, volumes 1 and 1) Alex P. McInnes (Dunlevy), and the internet.
READ MORE: HAPHAZARD HISTORY: 188 Mile roadhouse reminder of rich Cariboo history
Barry Sales is a retired teacher who writes a monthly historical column for the Williams Lake Tribune.
Don’t miss out on reading the latest local, provincial and national news offered at the Williams Lake Tribune. Sign up for our free newsletter here.