Thompson River in the context of "North Cascade Range"

The Fraser Canyon Gold Rush (also Fraser Gold Rush and Fraser River Gold Rush) began in 1858 after gold was discovered on the Thompson River in British Columbia at its confluence with the Nicoamen River a few miles upstream from the Thompson's confluence with the Fraser River at present-day Lytton. The rush overtook the region around the discovery and was centred on the Fraser Canyon from around Hope and Yale to Pavilion and Fountain, just north of Lillooet.

Though the rush was largely over by 1927, miners from the rush spread out and found a sequence of other gold fields throughout the British Columbia Interior and North, most famously that in the Cariboo. The rush is credited with instigating European-Canadian settlement on the mainland of British Columbia. It was the catalyst for the founding of the Colony of British Columbia, the building of early road infrastructure, and the founding of many towns.

Kamloops (/ˈkæmluːps/ KAM-loops) is a city in south-central British Columbia, Canada, at the confluence of the North and South Thompson Rivers, which join to become the Thompson River in Kamloops, and east of Kamloops Lake. The city is the administrative centre for, and largest city in, the Thompson-Nicola Regional District, a region of the British Columbia Interior.

The city was incorporated in 1893 with about 500 residents. The Canadian Pacific Railway was completed through downtown in 1886, and the Canadian National arrived in 1912, making Kamloops an important transportation hub. Kamloops North station is the first stop on VIA Rail's eastbound transcontinental service, The Canadian, while the Rocky Mountaineer and the Kamloops Heritage Railway both use Kamloops station.

The North Cascades are a section of the Cascade Range of western North America. They span the border between the Canadian province of British Columbia and the U.S. state of Washington and are officially named in the U.S. and Canada as the Cascade Mountains. The portion in Canada is known to Americans as the Canadian Cascades, a designation that also includes the mountains above the east bank of the Fraser Canyon as far north as the town of Lytton, at the confluence of the Thompson and Fraser Rivers.

They are predominantly non-volcanic, but include the stratovolcanoes Mount Baker, Glacier Peak and Coquihalla Mountain, which are part of the Cascade Volcanic Arc.