page_title: Frank Swannell
section_title: 1908-1914
hierarchical_section_title: Frank Swannell / 1908-1914
caption_attribution_description: English: Swannell's pack train at the Omineca Mountains. Photo taken 1913.
context_page_description: Frank Cyril Swannell was one of British Columbia's most famous surveyors.
  He came to British Columbia during the era of the Klondike Gold Rush and became a surveyor's assistant. Then, from 1908, he was a professional surveyor and surveyed many regions of British Columbia. He kept a journal of his work and collected over 5000 unique pictures of the era, which were donated to BC Archives for the benefit of future researchers. The photographs span a period of more than 40 years and cover many areas of the province. Their subjects include stagecoaches, sternwheelers, old forts and remote villages, mountains and rivers, pioneer settlers, miners and First Nations people. Swannell's pictures are a priceless contribution to the history of British Columbia.
context_section_description: The construction of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway caused a great deal of interest in Central and Northern British Columbia, and settlers were arriving looking for agricultural land, which needed to be surveyed before it could be sold or pre-empted. The equipment the surveyors used would be considered simple by today's standards, but it was remarkably accurate: a transit and a 66-foot length of chain (80 lengths to a mile). The pioneer surveyors did more than survey land, they also recorded the topography, soil conditions and potential uses of the land, information that was a necessity for the government and land-seekers alike.
  In 1908, Swannell received the government contract to survey the Nechako Valley. 
  Swannell and his crew worked in the summers and he kept his winter home in Victoria.
  When spring came, they would travel from Vancouver on the Canadian Pacific Railway to Ashcroft and take a stagecoach to Soda Creek where the sternwheeler Charlotte would take them to Quesnel. From Quesnel it was a ten-day hike along the Yukon Telegraph Trail to the Nechako Valley. 
  Surveying British Columbia into the familiar 640 acre sections that are created by north to south range lines and east to west township lines was much more difficult than it was in many other areas of Western Canada. Survey lines had to be cut through dense wilderness, across swamps, lakes, rivers and over mountainous areas. 
  Aside from surveying, Swannell also had to worry about keeping food supplies on hand for his crew, a problem which was quite often nearly insurmountable as there were few farms in the region and goods often took three weeks or longer to arrive from Hudson's Bay Company stores on pack trains or by canoe.
  During that first summer, Swannell and his crew surveyed the area around Fort Fraser, Fraser Lake and  Stoney Creek.
  In 1909, Swannell and his crew began the season by surveying lots in the Lillooet and Pemberton areas and several locations around Anderson and Seton Lakes. By July, they were finished and returned to Quesnel, transferring from the Charlotte to the new sternwheeler, Nechacco which was able to take the crew up the Fraser to Fort George and onto the Nechako River all the way to Fraser Lake. In August, Swannell traveled to Fort St. James and inspected the surrounding area, including Stuart Lake and Takla Lake. From there, Swannell traveled to Moricetown, Hazelton and Prince Rupert, taking many pictures of the pioneer communities and First Nations villages along the way before returning to his home in Victoria that November.
  In 1910, Swannell spent January and February working close to his home in Victoria, working on Saltspring Island. In March, he went to the Gordon River from Port Renfrew and in mid March continued on to more surveying at Atla Lake in the Whistler region. By early April Swannell had moved on to the Lillooet River. By July, he and his crew had returned to the Nechako Valley and surveyed the areas around Fraser Lake and the Nechako River and the Endako Valley. That year, Swannell left Endako in December, taking a 400-mile sleigh ride to Ashcroft to meet the CPR. He arrived home on New Year's Eve.
  In 1911, he completed some small government surveys around Victoria, as well as some surveying work for private interests. By March, he was back in the Lillooet region and returned to the Nechako Valley in mid May. Travel had already become more convenient in the years since they had begun work in the region and Swannell and his party took a BC Express Company stagecoach from Ashcroft to Soda Creek, where they boarded the BC Express Company's sternwheeler, BX. By the end of May, they arrived back in the Nechako region aboard the Fort Fraser and recommenced their surveying work in the area around Fort St. James.
  In 1912, Swannell won a large contract to survey the area around Nation Lake and throughout the surrounding Omineca Country. He and his crew would travel a total of 1,700 miles that season, most of it by raft, but some of them by a relative newcomer to the route into Northern British Columbia, the automobil
caption: Swannell's pack train near the Omineca Mountains (1913)