modern boundaries of the park, miners and prospectors were the first Europeans to regularly visit Bowron Lake (then called Bear Lake) and the surrounding area. The Bowron and Cariboo mountains were continuously explored through the mid-to-late-1800s. While the Canadian Pacific Survey searched for links through the mountain passes, John Bowron, the Gold Commissioner, sent exploration parties into the hills to establish mining routes into the gold-bearing ground. One of these routes followed the Goat River pass, connecting the Cariboo region to the Tête Jaune Cache in the Robson Valley, and was well-established enough to allow for dog sleds in the winter. This trail was eventually made obsolete when the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was finalized in 1914. On 31 March 1917, Bowron Lake was adopted as the official name of the lake previously known as Bear Lake, to honour John Bowron – though some maps had started using this name as early as 1914, eight years after his death. John Bowron was involved with the mining industry in Barkerville throughout his life. The park later took his name the same name as the lake. Settlement and establishment While the bulk of the initial non-native population arrived with the gold rush, the area enjoyed a modest but steady influx of settlers throughout the late 19th to early 20th centuries, even as the gold rush ended. Land grants were given to soldiers returning from the First World War, and many families arrived to start farms. With the end of the gold rush, trapping and hunting came to the forefront of the region's economy. While fish and game had fed miners for years, as the turn of the century arrived, the focus shifted from hunting for sustenance to sport hunting. Wilderness guides arrived in the area and attracted an ever-increasing influx of big game hunters looking to take advantage of what was called a "hunter's paradise" in the quadrangle of lakes that now make up the park. The most prominent of these guides, Frank Kibbee, started setting up trap lines in the area in 1900 and built a home on the shores of Bowron Lake in 1907. He was the longest-operating and most renowned guide in the region, and one of the lakes in the chain – Kibbee Lake – is today named after him. In the 1920s, as concerns were raised about stress on the wildlife population in the Cariboo Mountains, the