There have been many articles written on the early-day cattle drives from Texas and the southern States, with their hazards of rustlers, quicksand, and stampedes. But nothing has ever been printed about one of the biggest and most successful cattle drives in Canada, when P. Burns & Co. contracted to supply beef for all the construction camps of the Grand Truck Pacific and the Pacific Great Eastern railways through B.C. I worked for Burns for four years and took part in the killing and driving of twelve thousand head. — Wes Jasper, 12,000 head north.

So starts one of the most influential stories for Smithers, Bob Karrer said, who after meeting the author had his article published in the Terrace Herald in the 60s, to share the story that meant so much to the development of communities from Hazelton to Prince George.

“This was the most successful cattle drive ever, to build this railroad,” Karrer said.

Karrer first moved up to the northwest in the 50s, taking his practicum in welding school by correspondence in Kitimat, as in those days there were no trade schools, he said. Working for Alcan for one year, Karrer remembers Alcan using a sternwheeler as a bunk house for their employees, running it into a groove they built and surrounding it with gravel. This is the same sternwheeler which eventually ended up operating as a tour boat in the States, which Karrer said that U.S. John F. Kennedy rode on at one point.

“It was the story in Kitimat in those days,” Karrer remarked.

Karrer worked for Alcan for one year before moving out on his own, beginning out of a shack on the old hospital lawn and moving up from there. In the 60s he moved to Terrace, then later to Smithers. In Smithers Karrer began Jesse James Riggin after his unique rack system for trucks that could hold the six most common items that his customers were asking for. The name stuck, he said, as nowadays people are using their pickups as people years ago used their horses.

“Who needed the advanced riggin?” Karrer asked. “Well, Jesse James did when he was an outlaw.”

It was in the 60s that he met Wes and Delmar Jasper on a hunting trip in the Chilcotin. Late at night, Karrer, his friends, and Wes’s grandchildren would sit and listen as Wes recounted his stories as a young cowhand and coyote hunter.

“I will never forget it, they [the kids] were like little owls,” Karrer said. “They’d poke one another once awhile but while old Wes got into talking they never said a word.”

One of these stories was of how Wes and a few others had herded 12,000 head of cattle up from the Chilcotin through the bush to the Government Ranch atop of Hungry Hill, and head them down dozens at a time to railroad workers, slaughtering them as they went, eventually to stop in Hazelton. Beyond there the supply could make it in by boat, but any further and the bush was the only way, at least until the railroad began to function.

So fascinated by this story and realizing its worth to historians and the people up in the North, Karrer borrowed the copy of the story that Wes had written and submitted to the Family Herald Free Press, a popular farm paper throughout the prairies, and submitted it to the Terrace Herald. The story has since been published in Pioneer Legacy — Chronicles of the Lower Skeena River, Volume 2, which was where, years later, Karrer found the copy of the old story after searching newspaper archives with no results. Finally, Karrer found luck through a community historian in Terrace.

“She said, ‘well hell! We published it in this book [Pioneer Legacy], but it was in the Terrace Herald,’” Karrer said, who laughed and responded, “well, hell, I published it in the Terrace Herald!”

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Twelve thousand head north, by Wes Jasper, Riske Creek, B.C.

Published in the Terrace Herald, submitted by Bob Karrer.

There have been many articles written on the early-day cattle drives from Texas and the southern States, with their hazards of rustlers, quicksand, and stampedes. But nothing has ever been printed about one of the biggest and most successful cattle drives in Canada, when P. Burns & Co. contracted to supply beef for all the construction camps of the Grand Truck Pacific and the Pacific Great Eastern railways through B.C. I worked for Burns for four years and took part in the killing and driving of twelve thousand head.

Delivery of meat to the construction camps through the Prairie provinces was fairly easy, but when the work started in B.C. there was a much more difficult terrain to cope with. When the steel got to the Fraser River in the Rocky Mountain Trench the beef was transported down the river by boats or scows to the caps along the route; but when the route left the river and started across central B.C., supplies — including cattle — had to go over land through rough country.

Construction had started on the west end of the line about 1908, and by 1910 had come to the end of rover transportation on the Skeena at Hazelton. Then all beef had to be driven in over land from the Chilcotin, one of the largest cattle areas of B.C., and this is where I entered the picture.

I was a lad in 1910, working at the Douglas Lake Ranch, having come from Washington cross the line, when I heard about P. Burns taking an experimental drive of cattle from Chilcotin to Hazelton, which was evidently a success. About this time I received a letter from my brother Bill, who was in Kamloops, telling me to come at once as he had signed us both on for a beef drive to Hazelton. Wonderful news for a young fellow my age who had big ideas on being a top cowhand! We were to leave Ashcroft on April 20 for Chilcotin to round up beef to start on the drive.

Joe Paine, foreman on the experimental drive, was in ill health now, so Ulysses Campbell took his place, as he had been on the previous drive with Paine. Most of the crew was recruited at Kamloops. They were Campbell, Antione Allen, Johnny Cannon, Gus McGregor, Exra Knapp, Abe Sponner, Alva Shaffer, Jack Kidlaw, Pete Duncan, my brother Bill and myself.

At Ashcroft we me Cy Heman, Burns' cattle buyer in the interior of B.C., who had bought up a bunch of saddle and pack horses for us, as everything had to go by pack horse after we left the Chilcotin. It was five hundred miles of trail from Quesnel, the end of the wagon road, to Hazelton. Most of the horses Cy had bought were very poor due to the previous hard winter, so we were glad to hit Canoe Creek, where the horses from the first beef drive were wintered. Now we were pretty well mounted for our trip through the Chilcotin to Chezacut. There we started gathering the beef that Herman had contracted for all the price of fifty dollars per head for three-year-olds, sixty dollars for anything older and thirty-five dollars for cows. The cattle were pretty thin this time of the year, so we handled them slow and easy to get all the fat on them we could before they reached the construction camps. Burns received twenty-five cents per pound delivered to the camp.

From Chezacut, on the upper Chilcotin, we started south receiving cattle at the various ranches along the way until, by the time we reached Riske Creek, we had nearly eight hundred head. Riske Creek was to be our main camp and receiving point for the beef that was to go north, as there was plenty of grass on the rolling prairie country and lots of water. Here Fred Becher operated a hotel and bar with a varied assortment of liquors at reasonable prices, as well as a post office and a very good store. Becher obliged the cowboys if they were broke by charging a bottle of spirits to Burns and putting it on the store bill as a shirt and six pairs of socks.

On our arrival at Riske Creek with the beef, we were pleased to find Archie McLean and Jim McDonald there with sixty head of fresh, fat saddle horses sent over from Alberta. We spent several days of shoeing all the saddle horses and fifteen head of pack horses and branding a "10" on the left hip of all of them. We also branded all the beef with Burns' "NL" brand for the trail brand. There was no brand inspection in those days, and in all the ten thousand or more meat we drove out of the Interior, there was never a complaint of P. Burns taking an animal he hadn't paid for.

We were planning on leaving Riske Creek on May 10 when Blake Wilson, Burns' superintendent from B.C., arrived unexpectedly by horse and buggy from Ashcroft. He said the camps were out of meat at Hazelton and we were to pick out five hundred head of steers and make a fast drive to Hazelton. So we loaded enough supplies — mostly bacon, beans, flour, sugar, syrup, dried fruit, coffee, tea, Klondyke vinegar and rice — to last until we got to Quesnel, our last store until we reached the Bulkley Valley. There were seven cowboys, and cook, and a packer, who had to act as a horse wrangler as well, and about forty-five head of horses.

The first night out, we night-herded the cattle, as they were restless so soon off their range. We held them on the flats north of Meldrum Creek, which is now Allen Jeffries' ranch. Two riders were on duty, changing one at a time every two hours. One man would go to camp, unsaddle his mount, wake up his relief and usually get a cussing for doing so, and so on until daylight. At daybreak we could count scores of deer coming up from the river, heading for the mountains.

At Riske Creek, we left about three hundred head of beef, which was to become the nucleus of another drive; Harry Curtis was to start out with this drive thirty days after us. During this time he was to enlarge the corrals and build a branding chute, as he had to rope and stretch out every head we re-branded.

Our route followed the west side of the Fraser River and the trip was uneventful until we reached what is now known as the China Ranch, owned by Sing Lees. We told the cook that he was a better packer than cook. My brother Bill, who was a first-class cook as well as a top cowhand, became our cook and horse wrangler.

Eight days passed before we reached Quesnel. Here we stayed a couple of days to rest the cattle and stock up on provisions to last the entire trip. Bacon and beans were the staple articles.

At Quesnel we met Jean Catalin,e the old packer, who had two pack trains loading up for the trip to Hazelton and north to the Ninth Cabin on the old Telegraph Trail. He had sixty mules and sixty horses in his train. From Cataline we got much information regarding the camping places along the trail, where there were only certain places that there was good water. Some of these spots were only three or four miles apart, others twelve to fifteen. We were always on the move by six o'clock in the morning, but sometimes we would be in camp for the day by nine or ten.

This northern country is all covered with brush, mostly red willow, as the trail narrows, the cattle had to be strung out single file. We counted out the cattle in the morning between two riders, the lead man taking about fifteen head to start out, and a rider swinging in behind every fifty head. That way, they were soon all in single file. You never saw a cowboy in front or behind you all day unless you were in the lead and got stuck at some mud hole or boggy creek and couldn't get the cattle across. The foreman always counted out in the morning and the lead man counted in at night. Sometimes it took about two hours before the last ones were in.

When we reached Mud River, we decided to rest the cattle in this big, open, grassy country for a couple of days while the cowboys cleaned up and had a good sleep. A swim and a change of clothes sure felt good, as we had only taken off our boots at night since we started.

At Mud River it was the usual routine: count the cattle out in the morning, ride all day, count them in the — bacon, beans, bannock, and coffee until we came to the Nechako River at Fort Fraser. Here we had to swim the cattle across the river. We let the herd rest and fill up for a couple of days, during which time we built a pole corral and a chute or runway into the water where the stream was about 150 yards wide and very sluggish. We found an old flat-bottom scow at this point, which we used to ferry two cowboys and their horses across to hold the cattle as they came out of the water. The boss had hired two First Nations with their canoes to point the leaders across. We had to wait two hours for the sun to get around so it would not shine in the cattle's eyes when they were swimming, as they were apt to turn back if it did.

After getting the first bunch about a quarter of the way across, and seeing they had made up their minds to cross the other side of the river, we started stringing the rest of the herd in. It was only a half-hour before the whole bunch was on dry ground across the river.

Then came the job of loading all our camp outfits on the scow and ferrying it across. After that we swam the horses, but that took but a short time as horses swim much faster than cattle. It was about two miles to the Hudson's Bay fort from the crossing, and we decided to camp there and do some trading. The factor had not had any fresh beef since fall before, so, as we needed a few essentials, the boss ordered a steer butchered for trade. After all the trading was done we had a balance to our credit, which was adjusted with a gallon of Hudson's Bay rum, much appreciated by all.

Up to this time we had had very good weather, but after we left Fraser Lake it started to rain, and we had rain and drizzle every day for thirty days. Some of the cattle got mud fever or foot rot (the foot swells to three times the normal size and then breaks between the toes). These animals had to be watched very closely during the day, as they would sneak off the trail into the thick underbrush and lie down. We often passed them by, not missing any until the count was made at night. Next morning, someone had to backtrack to find the lost ones, which were generally following along at a very slow pace.

We were getting into the vicinity of Burns Lake by now and had been warned by packers and First Nations to watch for poison weeds in the area. Because there had been so much rain, the wild parsnip, which is deadly to cattle, was easily pulled by the roots. We were luck to lose only three head going through this stretch of country.

When we finally came to the Bulkley Valley it looked like the Promised Land to us after fighting the mudholes and underbrush of the last four hundred miles. We traveled down this valley of large open side hills until we came to what is known as the Government Ranch (the ranch at Hungry Hill) about fifty-six miles from Hazelton. Here we decided to hold the cattle for the summer and drive out from the main herd what was needed for the camps every week.

Burns & Co. had built a slaughterhouse at Hazelton by now and wanted meat right away, so we took a hundred head of the best steers there, killing a few along the way at the construction camps that were just getting started east of Hazelton. Two men were left to range-herd the four hundred head left in the Bulkley Valley.

Because there was such a demand for horses, the boss at Hazelton, Bob Grant, decided to sell all the surplus stock and send the outfit around by Prince Rupert and Vancouver to Ashcroft. There he would round up another drive for the north.

A butcher and I were sent back to the herd camp for another drive to supply the slaughterhouse and camps for a week. We worked at this job for three summers. We would take the camp orders on the way out and in that way we knew how many head to bring each week. If a camp wanted four beef or one, it was killed right at the camp on the ground, and I would continue on to the next camp and wait for the butcher to overtake me. Again he would shoot as many as they required, and I would travel on with the rest of the beef until none was left.

On one of these trips in the vicinity of 20 Mile House, which was a roadhouse and bootleg joint, I lost one steer. While tracking it around through the underbrush about a quarter mile from the buildings, my horse stepped into a large hole but recovered his footing and got out. It all looked level to me, but on closer scrutiny I removed three feet of moss and found a cache of five cases of liquor — rye and Scotch. As I did not care for Scotch, I left it and gave my partner a surprise party on the road when he overtook me. I never did find that steer and always after when we stopped at the 20 Mile House, they didn't seem too friendly.

During the course of the summer three more drives of five hundred head each arrived at the herd camp, making a total of about two thousand head for the summer. Cattle fatten very quickly in that north country on the lush pea vine and vetch, but they also lose their fat just as fast when the frost hits the pea vine. So about the tenth of September we started making larger drives to the slaughterhouse at Hazelton. There they froze a thousand carcasses to last till fresh beef could arrive from Chilcotin the following year.

The last of the cattle were brought in the first of November. As there was a good demand for horses, we sold all our saddle stock at $150 per head and loaded our camp outfit and gear in a forty-foot First Nation canoe and started down the Skeena River to Kitselas, about eighty miles from the end of the steel. Track-laying had been tied up here, waiting for completion of the tunnels at Kitselas Canyon.

At Prince Rupert we took passage on an old coast steamer, the Camosun 11. It was my first boat ride and I got very sick crossing the Queen Charlotte Sound.

The crew split up in Vancouver after a few days. I was sent to Ashcroft by Burns & Co. to drive a meat wagon, delivering beef to the Grand Trunk construction camps along the Thomson River. I worked at this till it was time to start north to Hazelton, about April 20.

Some of the old hands were in the new crew and we had a bunch of horses from the Okanagan. We started gathering beef from Canoe Creek, Dog Creek and Alkali Lake ranches. We arrived at Chimney Creek Bridge on the Fraser River with 350 head in 1912, just when they were taking out the old wooden towers and putting in the present steel towers. During this construction they allowed only three head on the bridge at one time, so it was a slow job crossing our cattle. The cattle were wild, never having become gentle on the feed ground, as ranchers seldom fed cattle in the winter in those days. It took us three days to cross, and we had to rope the last few and drag them over the bridge.

As the grass had become pretty well eaten out along the old Telegraph Trail north of Quesnel, it was decided to try a new route through the Nazko River, where we found large, open bunch-grass side hills and splendid fishing in the river. Frank English and I each staked a homestead here, seventy miles from Alexis Creek, on those side hills. They were the first stakes in the locality — but we never went back.

From the Nazko we followed an old Indian trail crossing the Blackwater River and Mud River, about thirty miles upstream from the Telegraph Trail crossing. We came onto the Telegraph Trail again at what was then known as the Government Meadow, about three days travel from Fraser Lake. After a short rest at the Nechako River, we swam the cattle across and encountered a lot of poison weed between Burns Lake and the North Bulkley River. After a very dry summer, the country was just blue with wild larkspur, which, at a certain time of flower, is very poisonous to cattle. We had to camp one night where the growth was very heavy.

In the morning we found nine of them dead and nearly forty head unable to get off the ground. After more than two hours work, such as bleeding by cutting the tail or ear and keeping them rolled up on their stomachs to prevent bloating, I was left to get the poisoned ones along as best I could. As one recovered a bit, it would get up and follow the trail for a mile or two, then fall down in a fit. After a short rest it would get up and continue. In handling these animals you had to stay well away from them, for when they got excited they would fall down in a fit and that caused another delay. After three days slow work these animals were all back in the herd, quite a few minus their tails or ears, but we never lost any more than nine head.

By this time the railway contractors had built a good many miles of wagon road from Burns Lake west, and driving cattle was much easier than the previous year through this part of the country. We were told by road gangs that the road would be finished by late fall.

The cattle were herded at the Government Ranch as before and killed at the camps. By now the camps had built corrals and a windlass to hoist the carcasses, which was a great help to the butcher.

After killing off the last of the cattle — and selling the poorer horses to the First Nations, who were by now beginning to appreciate a horse for packing but very seldom ever rode one — we loaded twenty five head of horses on the train at New Hazelton, the end of the steel by now, and traveled to Prince Rupert. From there we took our horses on the SS Prince Rupert to Vancouver, encountering some very rough water, which made most of the horses very sick. They were a sorry-looking bunch when we unloaded at Vancouver but still were not at the end of their journey. They were loaded again on the CPR and shipped to Ashcroft, where they wintered on a ranch in Highland Valley.

Burns & Co. got all their beef in the winter from Calgary, and there were two trainloads a week to be unloaded at Kamloops and fed and watered. I was sent to Kamloops to look after this stock. I stayed till spring then went to the Perry Ranch at Ashcroft to take care of the saddle horses that had wintered at Highland Valley. The horses were very poor and had to be fed oats as well as hay. As they had tons of potatoes on the ranch for which there was no market, the foreman suggested feeding them to the horses. This was finally successful after mixing the potatoes with cut-up carrots and oats. After thirty days you wouldn't have known they were the same horses. When the time came to start north on the beef drive, three cowboys were bucked off the first morning.

In 1913 the drivers started out earlier than before, as there was a greater demand than ever for beef on the Grand Trunk Railway. We had close to eleven hundred head gathered at Riske Creek to be divided into two drives — one going by Nazko route and the other by Quesnel and the Telegraph Trail, starting north at the same time. The herds had been sorted and corralled for the night, ready to start the next day. Sometime during the night something gave them a scare and they stampeded. They tore down the fence, and as there was only one wrangle horse in camp, there was nothing we could do until daylight. It took us three days to round them up again. For several days the steers would spook and run at every unusual sound.

I had been working with Harry Curtis's outfit during the beef roundup in the Chilcotin and had gone with his drive via the Nazko route as far as the Blackwater Crossing on the Telegraph Trail. I then joined my brother's drive north. Curtis's drive went to Prince George, where Burns had built a corral and a slaughterhouse. The main herd was left at Six Mile Flats and a bunch was driven in every every week to the slaughterhouse.This was the boom year for Prince George, which had, with all the construction workers and land seekers, an estimated ten thousand people in the area.

When we got to the Nechako River, the water was very high, too high for the cattle to land in their usual place. After waiting ten days for the water to recede, we attempted a crossing, but the river was still high and the cattle got to milling around in the middle of the stream and about ten head were trampled under and drowned.

I worked at my job of driving beef to the camps all summer. We killed about the same number of beef on our end of the line and about fifteen hundred head went to Prince George, making thirty-five hundred head of beef for the railway in 1913.

On November 1, I had a wire from my brother at Riske Creek. He was gathering cattle for the last drive to Prince George and he wanted me to meet him in Quesnel as soon as possible as he was short of men and horses. After killing the last of the beef, Exra Knapp, Kim Pratt and I headed south with a bunch of tired, weary horses and with ten inches of snow on the ground. Our horses were very thin, as there had been a lot of swamp fever that summer, and we lost three on the way to Quesnel. We were pleased to see the boys feeding their horses with oats when we met the big drive. There were ten pack horses loaded with oats as well as a four-horse team for the chuck wagon and beds. There were fifteen cowboys to handle 860 head in this drive.

About the fifth of December, we arrived at Prince George with the last beef drive for the construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad. In the course of four years this had been a very profitable market for close to twelve thousand head of cattle.