Port Douglas, British Columbia

Port Douglas, British Columbia is a remote community at the head of Harrison Lake, which is the head of river navigation from the Strait of Georgia. Port Douglas, often called simply Douglas, was the second major settlement of any size on the British Columbia mainland (after Yale during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush.

From Port Douglas to Lillooet a mixed land and water route was built named the Douglas Road, aka the Lillooet Trail, Harrison Trail or Lakes Route. During its rowdy heyday Port Douglas had thousands of residents and many of the BC mainland's first companies had their start here, including the famous B.X. Express and other major freighting companies, who relocated to the Fraser Canyon with the completion of the Cariboo Wagon Road in the mid-1860s.

Although Port Douglas dwindled in size rapidly with the abandonment of the Douglas Road and today there is nothing left - other than the placename and the adopted name of the local First Nation, the Douglas Band of the In-SHUCK-ch Nation.

A land alienation pattern on the lakeshore to the southwest of Douglas, across the mouth of the Lillooet River and down the lake a bit, remains on the map as Tipella City. It was a 19th Century land-promotion scheme that never went anywhere, although a number of investors and buyers were taken in by it.

Regular steamboat traffic to Port Douglas from Georgia Strait and New Westminster via the Fraser River ended in the 1890s, although the town was long-dead by then, with only a handful of non-native residents. In the 1970s a large logging operation bulldozed the last remains of the town, which were only vestiges of a few foundations.

Both Port Douglas and the Douglas Road, as well as the Douglas Ranges to the west of Harrison Lake, were named in honour of the first governor of the Colony of British Columbia, Sir James Douglas.

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