While out walking north of Williams Lake above Mile 168 Road, Ian Robertson found an ox shoe.
“I was walking along and there in the summer,” he told the Tribune. “I thought it was a horse shoe because I saw the nail holes.”
The area is popular for people riding ATVs or snowmobiles, but Robertson said he prefers to walk.
“If you look around at the ground, you find things,” he said.
Massimo Calabrese, a summer student at the Museum of the Cariboo Chilcotin, said the museum has a few ox shoes in its collection found at 150 Mile House and Horsefly, although they are not on display.
Cariboo historian and columnist Barry Sale said the ox shoe find in that location is not a suprise.
“It was a well-used area for the ox freighters. They would stop and graze their oxen overnight or couple of days while they stayed at the the 164 Mile House.”
Oxen were not driven down to Soda Creek because it was too steep and it would have required unpacking and repacking for them to ship them up on the river boats.
The Cariboo Wagon Road extended to Soda Creek by 1862 and then reached Quesnel by 1863, Sale said.
Read more: Haphazard History: ‘Frank’s Way’ or the highway, part one
Read more: Haphazard History – ‘Frank’s Way’ or the highway: part two
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