Bridge of the Twenty-Three Camels

The highway bridge over the Fraser River at Lillooet carries the official name "Bridge of the Twenty-Three Camels" — one of those British Columbia names with a story behind it. The bridge itself is a functional concrete structure offering good views up and down the Fraser canyon, but the name commemorates one of the stranger episodes of the Gold Rush era: a failed attempt to use Bactrian camels as pack animals on the old Cariboo Road.

The bridge is the main crossing point into Lillooet from Highway 99 and marks the spot where the river cuts through the dry benchlands. From the bridge you can see the confluence of the Bridge and Fraser rivers upstream, and the dramatic canyon walls that make this stretch of the Fraser so visually striking.

things to do sight
A story
In 1862, a merchant named Frank Laumeister imported 23 Bactrian camels from San Francisco to use as pack animals on the Cariboo Road. The experiment was a failure — the camels frightened horses and mules, their feet could not handle the sharp mountain rock, and the other packers complained bitterly. Laumeister eventually released them into the wild, where they were occasionally spotted in the BC interior for decades afterward. The bridge was officially named in their memory.

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