Travellers along Highway 1 through the Fraser Canyon encounter seven road tunnels between Yale and Boston Bar, and those who drive the highway often can probably rattle their names off in order: starting from the south they are Yale, Saddle Rock, Sailor Bar, Alexandra, Hell’s Gate, Ferrabee, and China Bar.
When the Cariboo Highway was originally built in the mid-1920s, however, there were only two road tunnels, both of which were (somewhat confusingly) called Hell’s Gate. They were very close together, with the northernmost one considerably shorter than the other.
When improvements to the highway were done starting in the early 1950s, as part of the Trans-Canada Highway project, the road underwent considerable realignment, and five tunnels were added between Yale and Boston Bar. Both of the tunnels at Hell’s Gate were replaced, as considerable blasting was done at the site to move the highway to the east of its original location.
The photo shows the Cariboo Highway and the two original Hell’s Gate tunnels c. 1926. The southernmost tunnel, to the right of the picture, still exists, west of the current Hell’s Gate tunnel, and can be seen from the highway by southbound travellers. It can also be approached via a fairly easy walk from the parking lot by the former Elvis Rocks the Canyon restaurant, although journeying into the tunnel is discouraged because of the uneven road surface and the danger of falling rocks.
No trace remains of the shorter of the two original Hell’s Gate tunnels, which was replaced by a considerably longer tunnel. To avoid confusion, this new tunnel was renamed Ferrabee, after a Royal Engineer who was involved in the construction of the original Cariboo Waggon Road in 1862. Work on the new Hell’s Gate tunnel was completed in 1960, while the Ferrabee tunnel was completed in 1964.
A fascinating series of photographs showing the building of some of the modern tunnels can be found at https://bit.ly/46NlpnG.
