The area above the Thompson River around Ashcroft has been prone to landslides for centuries; the most famous slide in the area occurred near Black Canyon, just south of what would become the Village of Ashcroft, in Oct. 1880. Only two months earlier, a slide had occurred nearly 30 miles south at Murray Falls just below the town of Spences Bridge, which had previously been known as Cook’s Ferry after Mortimer Cook, an American who set up a rope ferry across the river during the early days of the Gold Rush. Although a ferry continued to operate across the river, tit was augmented by a bridge built by Thomas Spence in 1864 as part of the Cariboo Wagon Road; hence the change in the town’s name.
The area around Murray Falls is susceptible to landslides, and the 1880 slide—which occurred on the side of a mountain known as Arthur’s Seat or Shawniken Mountain—was described in The British Colonist newspaper as “of unusual magnitude” and deposited “thousands of tons of earth and rock” into the river. Slides in 1894 and 1899 at the same site partially dammed the river for a time.
No lives were recorded as lost in either of those slides. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the worst slide recorded in the area—again at Shawniken Mountain—which occurred on Aug. 13, 1905. A few dozen people of European ancestry lived in or near the town, which as a stop along the Wagon Road boasted five general stores, three hotels, a school, and an Anglican church (St. Michael and All Angels, which still stands at the south end of town). Much larger, in terms of population, was a First Nations village that was located across the Thompson River from Murray Falls and Shawniken Mountain, south of the town, which had approximately 100 inhabitants.
One of the European residents of Spences Bridge was Jessie Ann Smith, the celebrated orchardist known as “Widow Smith of Spences Bridge”, who wrote about the event in her memoirs. It was a Sunday, she recalled, and as it happened most of her children had activities planned on or around the river that day. Daughters Jessie and Mima planned to ride south along the river to visit an Indian ranch; sons Johnnie and Frank planned to go downriver with some friends to watch three Indians who were fishing with dipnets; and daughter Maggie was going to go with a hired man and his two young daughters for a swimming lesson in the Thompson.
Shortly after 3 p.m., Smith heard a loud roaring noise, and hurried outside to see what had happened. “The sight we saw was fearful. A large part of the mountain on our side of the river and just below Murray Creek had broken away and was crashing down right across the valley. Rocks and earth were still crumbling down. The Thompson River was completely dammed and a great wall of water 15 to 20 feet high came rushing back upstream. And five of my children had left to go to the river!”
Smith rushed to where the hired man lived, and found that he had not yet set out for the river; he had, for some reason, decided to clean out a root cellar before taking the girls to swim, and they were all safe.
“The river was soon a foaming lake and the water was rising rapidly,” wrote Smith. The wall of rock blocked the river downstream of Smith’s house, and she realized that as the bank was much lower on the west side—where her house was located—than on the east bank, their property was in danger of being surrounded by rising water, so she began planning a move to higher ground. Smith’s daughter Bella, who was 16, hitched horses up to a wagon, and the family began piling possessions into it.
Bella also helped the local ferryman, John Myers, secure the ferry, which had been torn from its moorings and was floating loose in the river. Local resident James Teit, who was away, had a boat in a locked shed, and Bella dug under the wall of the shed to gain access to it and open the door. Myers used the boat to secure the ferry, then used the ferry to rescue some horses, cattle, and pigs that were in a corral on the far side of the river.
It was an hour before Johnnie and Frank returned home. Their mother had reminded them they had to water the flowers before they left, and the boys reported that as a result they were only halfway to where the Indians were fishing when the slide occurred. “The three Indians were buried alive under the slide,” they reported. “If you had not told us to water your flowers, we would all have been buried beneath that awful slide.”
The family now feared that some of the buildings on the property could be swept away if the water continued to rise, so Bella and Johnnie began securing them to poplar trees using chains and ropes. It was nearly four hours since the slide, and Smith had no idea where Jessie and Mima were. As Bella and Johnnie worked, they heard someone laughing, and turned to see their sisters, who asked why they were tying the house up. They had no idea the slide had happened, and their mother asked where they had been.
“We didn’t go down to the chief’s ranch,” they replied. “Our horses refused to go down that way. We tried and tried to turn them that way but they always swung round to go the other way. So we gave them the reins and they went galloping up the road.” The horses had saved their lives.
Bella was urging the family to leave for safety, so Smith and her children—apart from Jessie and Mima, who were still on horseback—piled into the loaded wagon. They were about to start the trek toward higher ground when they heard two rifle shots: the agreed signal to alert people that the dam had been breached and water was now flowing through. The property, and town, were saved, and Jessie and Mima dismounted and gave their horses an extra good feed.
But what of the inhabitants of the Indian village directly across from the slide, and of the Canadian Pacific passenger train that was just south of Spences Bridge and heading towards the town when the slide happened? Find out in the next installment.
editorial@accjournal.ca
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