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A.L. Fortune's Overland Expedition

This paper is not a history of the Overland Expedition of 1862 nor a biography of A.L. Fortune. It is an attempt to follow Mr. A.L. Fortune's footsteps from Quebec in 1862 to when he staked his pre-emption claim in the Spallumcheen.

In 1861 and the winter of 1862 the newspapers were full of stories of the richness of the Cariboo mines. In the spring of 1862 about 200 young men left Quebec and Ontario to go overland to the mines. They all left mostly in parties. All the men from one town would make up a party and start together.

On the second of May, 1862, when he was 31, A.L. Fortune took a train from Beaudette, Quebec, on the Grand Trunk, bound for the Cariboo. When he left he was not in a party; he was alone. He went by railway to LaCrosse, Wisconsin, by steamer to St. Paul, Minnesota, and by stagecoach to Georgetown, Wisconsin.

The steamer left Georgetown on the 20th of May and arrived at Fort Garry on the 26th. On board the steamer were the other 200 young men bound for the Cariboo mines. Fortune had then joined five men from Acton, Ont. These six men were known as the Acton party on the trip across the plains. Now it was time to buy horses, oxen, carts, and a supply of food. It was also necessary to obtain information about the country they were going to travel over. The two types of food were flour and Pemmican. Finally they were ready to start the trip.

At 5 o'clock on a Monday afternoon, June the second, they all moved out for seven miles and camped for the night. The final preparation took place at Long Lake on the 5th of June. The several smaller parties were organized into one big one: 138 men in all, 97 carts and 110 oxen and horses. Each party elected one man to act as leader. Fortune was elected leader of the Acton party. Thomas McMicking of the Queenston party was elected captain of the brigade.

The trip to Edmonton was uneventful except for rain and soft roads which discomforted the men. For eleven days, just before they reached Edmonton, it rained every day. They reached Edmonton on the 21st of July, fifty days from Fort Garry.

When the group reached Edmonton they had 150 people. When they left Edmonton they had 125; a number of men decided to stay to mine the Saskatchewan River. Here the Acton party dissolved and Fortune joined the Huntington party. About 50 miles northwest of Edmonton, the carts were left behind. The loads were put onto the backs of the animals, which then numbered 140.

The trail between Edmonton and the Tete Jaune Cache was bad - soft, boggy ground and lots of streams to cross. They reached Tete Jaune Cache on Aug. 13th. Here the group split in half, some going down the North Thompson River to Kamloops and some down the Fraser River to Quesnel.

A.L. Fortune went with the Huntington party down the Fraser River to Quesnel. This section of the Fraser River is very dangerous, even for the experienced boatman. The Indians, when they saw the men start, shook their heads and exclaimed, "Poor whitemen, no more." But armed with courage and confidence, they arrived safely in Quesnel on the 11th of September without loss of man or animal.

Fortune went directly into the Cariboo with John Wattie. The mining camp proved to be unsuccessful, so Fortune and his companion returned to Quesnel. Fortune and two Wattie brothers left the Cariboo on Sept. 27 on a raft down to Alexandria. Here there was a pack trail which they followed, and ended up where some men were cutting hay for pack horses for the winter. Fortune left his oxen with a man for the winter. They then went to the mouth of the Bella Coola River and waited twenty-one days for a steamer. They hired some Indians with a canoe to take them across the Gulf to Fort Rupert. From here they waited eighteen days until a steamer took them safely to Victoria.

Fortune got a Government job working on the roads in Saanich. In the spring of 1864 Fortune left for the mines. He walked from Yale to Williams Creek. Fortune's experience in the mine and after is told in his own words:

"I prospected in deep cuts and shafts in wet and cold, forty degrees below zero at the top of the shaft; blasted rock, shovelled all kind of gravel, earth and quicksand; eighteen months of this life was enough. I spent $800 in prospecting besides my time and I paid $600 of a debt, borrowed $36 from a friend. I walked out of Cariboo with no gold and much experience about the last of October, 1865."

A.L. Fortune joined a boating party which traveled down the Fraser River from Quesnel to Lillooet. Fortune then worked on a farm near Lillooet with John Malcolm all winter.
The gold fever caught them, and they reached the Big Bend mines in 1866. They were flooded out but intended to return.

They gained some provisions and a canoe and started exploring about Seymour Arm. They found their way by water to the mouth of Salmon River, but they found no gold. Some Indians then told Fortune and Malcolm of some shiny sand and gravel on the shore of a lake, south-east from Salmon Arm. The two headed down the arm of the lake to Sicamous.

It was on Saturday th 14th of June 1866 that Fortune and three of his companions went down the Spallumcheen River to a place about four miles north of Enderby. The next day they went farther up the river and camped on top of the hill just east of what was to be Fortune's Ranch. On the 20th of June, the four of them. A.L. Fortune, John Malcolm, Thomas Dunn, and John B. Burns, all Overlanders of 1862, each staked a pre-emption claim.
What encouraged A.L. Fortune to travel to British Columbia in 1861 was not only his feeling for adventure but the news of a gold strike in the Caribou district.

In June of 1866 A.L. Fortune came to the Okanagan Valley where he decided to settle down and make his home. He once said, "I have looked back with gratitude to God for the privilege of being the first pioneer and settler of His guiding and planting in the North Okanagan."

Mr. Fortune was made Justice of the Peace in 1877, just eleven years after he first settled in the valley. He died in Enderby B.C. on July 5, 1915.

Kyle Wright
ALF School 1989