Pemberton is a village municipality in the Squamish-Lillooet region of southwestern British Columbia. This Pemberton Valley community is on the southwest shore of the Lillooet River and northeast shore of Pemberton Creek. On BC Highway 99, the locality is by road about north of Vancouver, northeast of Whistler, and southwest of Lillooet.

First Nations The valley lies in the unceded traditional territory of the Lil'wat First Nation, who have resided for thousands of years, but are now concentrated at Mount Currie. During the hunting season, the people journeyed into the headwaters of the Lillooet River. The absence of trails indicates travel was mostly by canoe. Indigenous farmers introduced potato growing to the area, having received seed potatoes either from passing early traders or from visiting the Lower Mainland.

Early European exploration Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) employees were among the first outsiders to venture into the valleys of the Birkenhead River and Lillooet River. In 1827, Francis Ermatinger came from the northeast via Seton Lake and Anderson Lake. Three years later, James Murray Yale arrived from the south. Their likely objective was to discover a feasible route between Kamloops and Fort Langley that bypassed the dangerous waters of the lower Fraser Canyon. The need became more critical when the HBC lost the main access to the Interior via the lower Columbia River after the Oregon Treaty transpired. To determine a new route suitable for horse travel, which connected the Fraser with present-day Mount Currie, Alexander Caulfield Anderson journeyed by way of Lillooet Lake and Harrison Lake in 1846.

Port Pemberton The Douglas Road, which conveyed miners and supplies, was a trail upgraded in 1858 during the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. The now ghost town of Port Pemberton, at the head of Lillooet Lake and the hub of this trail, comprised about six restaurants and six huts. Hemmed in by steep bluffs and large differences between high and low water on the lake, the unsuitable site is about by road east of present-day Pemberton. South of the port, Drinkall's Pemberton House provided lodgings and Otis Parsons (later of Parsonville) ran a general store.

Completed in 1864, the shorter Cariboo Road, which connected Yale to Barkerville via Ashcroft, ended most traffic on the Douglas Road. Consequently, most settlers abandoned the Pemberton area. The port and general area were named for Joseph Despard Pemberton, a surveyor for the Hudson's Bay Company and Surveyor-General for the Colony of Vancouver Island in the 1850s. Joseph Pemberton probably never visited the area. By 1874, only a few settlers remained and the indigenous people had returned to their traditional ways. By 1882, only one name appeared on the voters' list. Pemberton House was abandoned in the mid-1890s.

Agriculture

This section outlines agriculture south of the mouth of Ryan Creek. Pemberton Meadows includes north of this point.

John Currie, whose spouse was indigenous, was listed as a permanent resident by 1885, having significant landholdings with partners Dugald McDonald and Owen Williams. In 1888, Currie and McDonald pre-empted two lots which included present day northern Pemberton. McDonald left in 1890.

John Currie was also the inaugural Pemberton Meadows postmaster from 1895 to 1901. Unlike the later definition, Pemberton Meadows then included the current Pemberton. The general store/post office was housed in a log building on his farm, which was immediately northwest of Pemberton. Mail travelled via Lillooet. After a few years, the post office reopened at the later defined Pemberton Meadows.

In 1895, Will Miller preempted about northwest, adjacent to what would become Miller Creek. Acquiring further land with his brother Bob, they sold out to the Howe Sound, Pemberton Valley & Northern Railway (HSPV&N) in 1912. Pettit, who had pre-empted immediately east of Pemberton, sold land to Charles Barbour in the early 1900s.

The Currie household also provided meals and lodgings, a practice continued by Leonard Neill, the beef farmer who bought the property in 1903.

Early community In the early 1900s. John McKenzie opened a store on the Barbour land. A small lake a few miles to the north bears his name.

In the 1910s, the Pemberton Trading Co (PTC) bought the store, engaging J. Frank Brokaw as the manager. Brokaw was the inaugural Agerton postmaster from 1912 to 1915. The origin for the Agerton name is unclear. One possibility is the Latin "ager" meaning field, another is an abbreviation for "a great town". The post office location was not far from the former Currie ranch, where the Pemberton Meadows post office had closed a decade earlier. However, the store soon moved closer to the proposed HSPV&N train station (which was never built at that location).

Bob McLauchlan operated the first Pemberton Hotel for a few years before rebuilding in 1914 near the station. Decades later, this structure became the first unit of the Pemberton Motor Hotel. By the late 1920s, the hotel offered limited interior plumbing. The wife of William Tuck, the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE) roadmaster, was the proprietor. The dining room also served train passengers and later received a liquor licence. The business passed through several hands over a short period. Although World War I enlistments temporarily reduced the population, the presence of the railway attracted many new families.

Whereas the PTC store was about a mile from the built train station, Charles Wellington opened a store with upstairs accommodation around 1914 by the station. In 1915, William C. Kiltz took over at the PTC. About 1923, he left to establish the first Creekside store. Joseph Taillefer, who had joined the staff around 1920, became the PTC store manager. Their boarding house next door had six upstairs bedrooms. About 1930, the PTC relocated closer to the station, with upstairs accommodation for the storekeeper.

About 1931, the Pemberton community hall was erected, which hosted the Pemberton community dances instead of the more distant Boys' Club hall at Pemberton Meadows. That year, the Pemberton and District Board of Trade was formed, and the Agerton post office was renamed Pemberton. In 1934, the PTC store burned to the ground when gasoline from a lamp dripped onto a newly waxed upstairs floor. The store safe and some goods were saved. After temporarily operating from the community hall, Wellington's store was bought to become known as Taillefer's store.

For decades, the train station possessed the only phone. By the 1940s, Taillefer's store had a phone served by the provincial government network which operated across the railway transmission lines.

The Pemberton and District Co-operative Association, founded in 1941, primarily maintained a warehouse adjacent to the railway for shipping potatoes but also operated a small store managed by Mrs Prendergast. During the 1940s, the main street included the community hall, Bob Taylor's garage, Taillefer's store, the hotel, Prendergast's store, and Jack Taillefer's garage. Taylor ran the Pemberton Express (PX), which delivered express parcels, general freight, private mail, and groceries. He provided taxi, car rental, and produce haulage services. Also, he sold gasoline, farm machinery, and real estate. Warren Taillefer's store carried a wide variety of goods compared to Prendergast's small store in a log cabin, which closed by 1948. In the 1950s, the Prendergast building became Wendell and Grethyll Watson's café.

In 1951, the completion of the Bridge River Power Project brought electricity to Pemberton. In 1953, the British Columbia Telephone Co. installed party lines connected through the Squamish exchange. In 1958, an automatic telephone exchange opened at Pemberton. The village was incorporated in 1956.

Brotherston and McNally bought Jack Taillefer's garage and Ford agency in 1952, but the building became the first drugstore in 1964. In 1956, the Pemberton and District Credit union was established, and two years later, the Bank of Nova Scotia opened twice weekly. In 1957, Warren's (Taillefer) department store split into separate grocery and hardware stores. The latter opened a laundromat in 1964.

An RCMP detachment formed in 1961.

Railway In 1873, a route via the Pemberton area was an option surveyed, but rejected, for the proposed Canadian transcontinental railway.

By 1909, the HSPV&N Railway had bought the Neill ranch and Miller land. By 1911, the company owned around Pemberton. The HSPV&N planned townsites adjacent to the Squamish and Agerton settlements, naming the former as Newport. The prior Neill land was subdivided into 74 lots ranging from . The former Miller land was divided into larger acreages. After the company floundered, Foley, Welch and Stewart agreed in 1912 to build the line under the title of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway (PGE).

In February 1914, PGE renamed Newport as Squamish. The rail head reached the Pemberton area in early October 1914. When the first train from Squamish reached Pemberton later that month, passengers alighted onto a roughly hewn temporary platform, and a weekly mail service began.

During the decades of passenger travel, Pemberton was a regular stop. Tisdall station to the southwest also opened in 1914, but existed intermittently over the years.Timetable. 15 Feb 1959 Eastward links existed to Mount Currie and beyond. A water tower stood during the steam train era.

The first reference using the expression Pemberton station was 1919. The precise date the station name officially changed from Agerton is unclear, but was definitely the case by 1922.

About 1932, a steel structure replaced the wooden trestle bridge over the Lillooet River. A wye existed at the southern end of the station.

Later construction projects were a station agent house in 1958 and a new station in 1962.

The withdrawal of the Cariboo Prospector in October 2002 ended passenger train service.

Trails, roads, ferries, and bridges The Lillooet Cattle Trail, built via Pemberton in 1877, rendered limited benefit in relation to its cost. Maintained for four years, the trail slowly fell into disrepair. In 1891, rehabilitation was carried out, but the route remained unpopular. Bob Miller built the first wagon road in Pemberton.

In 1909, the Red Bridge was erected north of the later PGE bridge. During 1914 and 1915, a road was built from the eastern end along the north bank of the Lillooet River to Mount Currie. Formerly, travel was only possible during low water along the south bank.

In 1922, two howe trusses were replaced over the Lillooet, one being the Red Bridge.

A Pemberton ferry was subsidized from 1926 to 1935 to but may well have operated for a longer period. The location is unclear, but may have been over the Green River.

By 1953, a gravel road across former swampland replaced the old narrow dirt road to Mount Currie, which had included three unguarded railway crossings. A wider bridge over the Lillooet opened that year. Until 1958, no road existed between Pemberton and Bridge River. In earlier times, produce was transported to the mines by packhorse. In addition, the Pemberton Portage Road has provided a northward link. Paving of the Duffy Lake Road (Highway 99) to Lillooet was completed in 1991. The narrow Squamish to Whistler gravel road built in the early 1960s was extended to Pemberton in 1964. This road was paved in 1969 as far Mount Currie.

Forestry First Nations were the first loggers. During the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, timber was felled to build bridges and boats. Pemberton Meadows includes a broad outline of logging and milling in the area.

In 1938, a BC Forest Service ranger cabin was built close to the railway.

In 1971, Evans products established a sawmill, creating 175 mill jobs and 125 logging ones. During its short lived presence, the wellbeing of the community was enhanced.

Demographics