The Hurley has given its name to a famous B.C. backroad between Gold Bridge and Pemberton - the Hurley Main. A main is a logging main, that is to say a major trunk road for a network of logging roads. The route of the Hurley Main uses a defile known as Railroad Pass near the head of that river to emerge high above the Lillooet River, to which a steep, switchbacking descent must be made. Railroad Pass gets its name from its consideration as a possible railway route between the Coast and the Interior during the initial surveys for the Canadian Pacific Railway in the 1870s, and again during the heyday of railway speculation in British Columbia in the 1890s-1910s.