Thirty-five arduous days after departing from Prince George by canoe, North West Company explorer Simon Fraser reaches the mouth of the B.C. river that now bares his name. Reaching the end of the 840-km journey turned out to be a bit of an anticlimax. Fraser wrote in his journal of his "great disappointment in not seeing the main ocean, having gone so near it as to be almost within view.”
Not only was it not the mouth of the Columbia, the river he thought he was descending, but he and his men also met a hostile reception from Musqueam warriors, who promptly chased Fraser and his party back upstream all the way to what is now the town of Hope.
The party eventually retraced their steps travelling upsteam and arrived back in Prince George 37 days later.
