Willow River is a community northeast of Prince George, on the northeast bank of the Willow River, southeast of the confluence with the Fraser River, in central British Columbia. The name derives from the many willow swamps in the river valley. Comprising about 150 residents, it has a general store/post-office, a volunteer fire department, church building and a small community hall. Street map.
Transportation
A trackside signpost marks the flag stop for Via Rail's Jasper – Prince Rupert train. The immediate Via Rail stops are Prince George to the southwest and Aleza Lake to the east.
History
Railways & Speculation
The river confluence, close proximity to the Salmon River, and being handy to the Giscome Portage, made it a strategic location. The Cariboo, Barkerville & Willow River Railway (CB&WR) proposed linking Barkerville and Eagle (Eaglet) Lake. In its 1909 Annual Report, the Willow River Timber Co. (WRT) of Ontario highlighted the line's value in accessing the company's remote timber limits in the upper reaches of the Willow River. Investing $1.5 million in timber limits, a British syndicate planned a mammoth sawmill at the river mouth. The CB&WR never eventuated. Asset sales followed the 1922 WRT receivership.
By 1912, a Victoria-based syndicate acquired Lot 788, and the GTP acquired Lot 785, which was about due east and across the Willow River. Lot 782 lay between. That March, the Railway Commission had approved the future station location as near the centre of Lot 785. The Lot 788 syndicate widely publicized a 2,500-lot subdivision called "Willow City" on the soon coming Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTP) and at the terminal for the proposed Pacific & Hudson Bay Railway (P&HB), and additional misleading claims. Although, the proposed P&HB passed no closer than away, the locality was a possible terminus for an unlikely branch line crossing the Fraser, but no track ever eventuated anywhere. Tree clearing defined the planned streets the following year. Meanwhile, the GTP surveyed and subdivided its land, and contracted to have the 40 acres cleared by Christmas. Further lots were surveyed, and cleared. Warning prospective buyers not to confuse their 640-acre development with the syndicate's one away by rail from the planned station, the GTP began marketing their real estate. Already owning Lot 784, bordering to the north, the GTP also purchased Lot 781, northwest of the latter, to secure an overland access to the Fraser.
The syndicate renamed its parcel as "Willow River", and then further described the location as "the only townsite registered as Willow River". Either their acquisition of Lot 782 between the two developments or legal pressure amended it to "next to the GTP townsite of Willow River". The devious marketing practices created some buyer remorse among naïve faraway investors. Most of the premium lots with river frontage are now merely river silt. Meanwhile, the GTP weekly advertisements publicized their land as "the only one official and original GTP town of Willow River". Based in South Fort George, F.W. Crawford, the BC manager of the GTP's Transcontinental Townsites Co., was also secretary-treasurer of the chamber of commerce and a director of the Herald. The start of World War I saw land prices tumble. The syndicate lots never became more than rural and the GTP ones ultimately attained merely a hint of the significance promised by the promoters. Of the surveyed GTP town, the demand for lots evaporated. Only a quarter of the land, comprising the central portion and a sliver east along Railway Ave. to slightly beyond the Upper Fraser Rd. intersection, was eventually developed, but half these lots have since reverted to open spaces. (1913 map)
The Prince George-Willow River sternwheeler service provided a destination for day excursions, and an indispensable link until the railway service became reliable.