the Columbia District. In its heyday at the peak of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, it was reputed to be the largest city west of Chicago and north of San Francisco. It also earned epithets such as "the wickedest little settlement in British Columbia" and "a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah" of vice, violence and lawlessness. Yale played an important role in certain events of the gold rush period which threatened British control in the region with annexation by the United States: the Fraser Canyon War and McGowan's War. The Governor came to Yale during the first crisis, and government officials Matthew Baillie Begbie, Chartres Brew and Richard Clement Moody during the second, to address American miners and take control of matters. The unrest threatened the rule of the Crown over the Mainland (or "New Caledonia" as it was called before the creation of the mainland colony. (New Caledonia was usually applied to the fur district northwest from present-day Prince George). As Yale was the head of river navigation, it was the best location to be designated for the start of the Cariboo Wagon Road, as there were no usable roads between Yale and the settlements nearer the Fraser's mouth. The Cariboo Road, built in the early 1860s, ran from Yale to Barkerville via Lytton, Ashcroft and Quesnel. By the start of the 1870s, an overland route from New Westminster was finally built - the Yale Road along the south side of the river. It was formerly known as the Grand Trunk Road and in the 21st century as Old Yale Road; it survives in sections from Surrey through Abbotsford and Chilliwack (though no longer entirely a continuous "highway"). Its counterpart on the north side of the river was the Dewdney Trunk Road, built in the same period in advance of railway construction in the 1880s. That road ran only to Dewdney, just east of Mission City. Because of its unique role as a transshipment point for the Cariboo Road, Yale prospered for another twenty years after the gold rush. Although it declined in population, it retained some prestige and such sophistication as had grown up within the rough gold town. It was as familiar to early provincial high society as were New Westminster and distant Barkerville. During the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, construction ran directly through the village, built on flatland by the river. It destroyed the town's