Monkman Pass, in the Canadian Rockies, is southwest of Tumbler Ridge and northeast of Hansard. Found in the Hart Ranges, some consider this mountain pass as the southern limit of the informal grouping known as the Northern Rockies, although those are occasionally reckoned as extending farther southeast to Mount Ovington or even to Mount Robson.
The pass is at the head of the Murray River and south of the height of land at the head of the Parsnip River.
Monkman Pass forms part of Monkman Provincial Park. Like the park, Monkman Lake, Monkman Creek and Monkman Falls, it was named after Alexander Monkman.
History Discovery By the 1920s, Monkman Pass had been a First Nations travel route for some 300 years.
Alex Monkman was a pioneer trader and trapper in the Peace Country. According to his account, while on a westward trapping and hunting trip in the 1921/22 winter, he realized he had crossed the continental divide through a lower pass, either on locating a spike from the 1904 Grand Trunk survey, or on meeting trappers who had canoed from the Fraser River.Prince George Citizen, 16 Jun 1938
St. Pierre Gauthier (c.1850–c.1930), is also claimed as the discoverer. With a skilled eye for topography, he was reputed to be an expert trail locator. Of French-Cree ancestry, he spoke some English but was otherwise illiterate. Supposedly, after leading Monkman to the pass, the latter, being literate and well known, assumed the credit.
Hank Munro, a leading trapper in the area,Prince George Citizen: 2 Apr 1920 & 24 Jun 1943 was acknowledged by George Woosley as the true discoverer. Allegedly, Munro informed Monkman of its existence when railway fever was gripping the region.Prince George Citizen, 7 Jun 1928
Railway proposal During the early 1900s, grain and cattle from the Peace Country in Alberta and B.C. were primarily exported to the west coast by way of Edmonton—a circuitous by rail to Vancouver, which by a direct route would be only . By 1920, grain prices were low and freight rates high, and many settlers, who had been attracted by repeated government assurances that a line would be built imminently, were forced to abandon their holdings.
Monkman reported his findings to the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and the Canadian National Railway (CNR), and guided reconnaissance engineer E. Murray Hill through the pass in 1923. When CNR president, Sir Henry Thornton, visited the Peace Country in 1924, he promised to build a railroad westward when the region produced tonnage equal to of wheat. That volume surpassed within two years, no railway materialized.
The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTP) surveys during 1904–06 examined a Wapiti Pass line southwestward to Hansard, as did the 1920s surveys through Monkman Pass, with the latter offering a superior grade west of the Canadian Rockies.Prince George Citizen: 14 Aug 1924, 30 Oct 1924, 10 Mar 1938 & 17 Nov 1949 Via the CNR at HansardPrince George Citizen: 4 Sep 1924 & 27 Nov 1924 would be shorter than either the Pine or Peace passesPrince George Citizen: 14 Aug 1924 & 30 Oct 1924 for shipping Peace wheat,Prince George Citizen, 4 Sep 1924 and would require less than of new track to connect with the CPR controlled Edmonton, Dunvegan and British Columbia Railway.Prince George Citizen: 30 Aug 1923, 25 Sep 1924 & 4 Oct 1928 However, a branch line northwest from Brule, Alberta was the CNR preference.Prince George Citizen: 28 Mar 1924 & 4 Sep 1924
The CNR, reliant upon an unenthusiastic parliament for funding, and satisfied with their Yellowhead crossing, and the CPR leaning toward the Pine or Peace, Monkman Pass presented a compromise proposal that connected CNR tracks to the west with CPR tracks to the east.Prince George Citizen, 19 Feb 1925 If a further line through the mountains were economically viable, railway survey engineers favoured the Monkman route,Prince George Citizen, 25 Mar 1925 because of lighter snowfall and no chance of slides in a wide pass at its narrowest.
Bypassing their farms, this option drew protest from the northern Peace. Residents unfairly compared this choice to the then Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE), which "started nowhere, ended nowhere, and served no settlers". For nearly of the Monkman route, there were neither mines, good agricultural land nor timber belts. The Brule branch, or a modified alternative through Obed, Alberta, equally lacked appeal.Prince George Citizen: 12 Mar 1925, 17 Jun 1926, 2 Dec 1926 & 11 Aug 1938
The respective cost estimates were: Obed $13,336,000; Monkman Pass $16,092,000; and Pine Pass $21,472,000. In terms of cost benefit, the federal government favoured Monkman,Prince George Citizen, 3 Mar 1927 but the CNR and CPR chose Obed. For all participants, delay, not construction, was their prime objective.Prince George Citizen, 31 Mar 1927 The exercise created some uncertainty as to whether the PGE would build through the Monkman Pass or follow its earlier surveys north toward the Pine or Peace passes.Prince George Citizen, 16 Feb 1928 In 1928, the PGE conducted a joint survey with the CNR and CPR of these three possible routes.Prince George Citizen: 7 Mar 1929 & 18 Apr 1929 Meanwhile, British capitalists were considering building a Monkman line independent of the CNR or CPR.Prince George Citizen, 24 Dec 1929
During 1930, one of the four CPR survey parties in the Canadian Rockies examined the Monkman,Prince George Citizen, 18 Sep 1930 but unspecified doubtsPrince George Citizen, 30 Oct 1930 harmed its ranking.Prince George Citizen, 1 Oct 1931 When a boat freighting supplies to this survey camp capsized in the McGregor River, one of the two occupants drowned.Prince George Citizen, 11 Sep 1930
Though the Peace Pass was favoured,Prince George Citizen, 29 Oct 1936 the projected traffic did not warrant the expenditure, but the railway companies were open to the federal government constructing a line.Prince George Citizen, 15 Mar 1934 By 1937, the volunteer work on the Monkman road renewed a vision for a rail line.Prince George Citizen, 19 Aug 1937 Politicians lamented that if the existence of the Monkman Pass had been known earlier, it could well have become a rail route,Prince George Citizen, 18 Mar 1937 but the GTP rationale makes the claim questionable. The slump in the Asian wheat trade in the 1930s terminated any national interest.Prince George Citizen, 2 Jun 1938
In 1953, a storm of protest erupted from the northern Peace when B.C. and Alberta discussed the possibility of routing the proposed PGE line through the Monkman Pass.Prince George Citizen: 8, 15 & 19 Jan 1953 In 1958, the PGE opened a Pine Pass link from Prince George to Dawson Creek, where the line connected with the Northern Alberta Railways. One reason for this choice was that the Monkman option would have delayed the opening until 1960.Prince George Citizen, 6 Jan 1955
By the late 1970s, a railway line through the Monkman Pass area was foreseen as part of developing the Tumbler Ridge coal deposits.Prince George Citizen: 24 Nov 1975 & 10 Mar 1978 Reversing an agreement for the CNR to build the line through the pass, the B.C. government opted for the more expensive alternative of a BC Rail Tumbler Ridge Subdivision, passing northwest of the pass. Having five times the length of tunnelling and worse grades, this choice repeated the fiascos of the Dease Lake and Fort Nelson extensions. Although BC Hydro had previously decided not to dam the McGregor River, the government had apparently not ruled out this option. Consequently, the alternative proposal via Hansard had assessed this possibility.Prince George Citizen: 17 Jun 1980, 29 Aug 1980, 22 Sep 1980, 21 Oct 1980, 18 Feb 1981, & 2 Mar 1981
Sharp curves and long unventilated tunnels were a feature of the line built. Channeled away from live overhead wires, water pouring from the roof of one tunnel section beneath a lake was called the "carwash".Prince George Citizen, 1 Oct 2012 With coal mines closing between 2000–03 on the Tumbler Ridge Subdivision, the government did not recover its $400 million capital investment before progressively abandoning parts of the route. After temporarily recommissioning the line, a loaded 13-car coal train derailed in 2007, as did a 15-car loaded train in 2014.Prince George Citizen, 26 Apr 2014 The line abandoned in 2014,Prince George Citizen, 27 Jul 2015 CNR continued to transport coal over a circuitous route, until the whole line reopened after a six-month rehabilitation in 2017.
Highway Proposal, Construction Progress & Impact In 1925, the Surveyor General released a report on constructing a wagon road. After frustration in not securing a direct rail link, the Peace Country newspapers launched a campaign to build a highway from Prince George via Hansard and the Monkman Pass to Beaverlodge, Alberta. Ideal for tourism, transporting produce would be limited, because weather conditions would restrict its use to four or five months a year.Prince George Citizen, 20 Aug 1925 The Wapiti Pass, an alternative route, suffered the same deficiency.Prince George Citizen, 28 Jan 1926
A 1933 petition signed by affected residents urged the federal government to provide a highway.Prince George Citizen, 16 Dec 1937 Parliament debated the proposal of building through either the Peace, Pine, Wapiti or Monkman passes.Prince George Citizen, 10 Mar 1938 Tired of waiting, a group gathered at a 1936 meeting in Arthur Smith's farmhouse near Lake Saskatoon, Alberta. They formed the Monkman Pass Highway Association to construct a road between Rio Grande, Alberta, and the highway at Hansard, following the route previously surveyed by the railways.Prince George Citizen: 10 Mar 1938 & 16 Jun 1938 Arthur became publicity director.Prince George Citizen, 30 Sep 1937 A dirt road already existed from Beaverlodge to Rio Grande.
This route (newspaper overview map) would be cheaper than the circuitous Turgeon Highway, which was under construction, but progressing slowly. Federal funding for both highways was highly unlikely.Prince George Citizen, 1 Mar 1937 Initially, the Yellowhead Highway Association believed the proposal equally jeopardized their potential funding for linking Longworth with McBride,Prince George Citizen, 8 Apr 1937 but ultimately lent their support.Prince George Citizen, 7 Jun 1945 The Monkman team persevered with their lobbying of the federal and provincial governments,Prince George Citizen, 11 Mar 1937 maintaining the position that all such projects were worthy of support.Prince George Citizen: 25 Mar 1937; & 2 & 16 Feb 1939 George Richardson drove cattle through the pass in 1937.Prince George Citizen, 17 Jul 1964