If you had wanted to go by land to the newly-founded hamlet of Hazelton on the Skeena River in 1871 (or anywhere in the Cariboo), you might have been interested in this advertisement in the Victoria Daily Colonist of March 12, 1871. For the Yale to Soda Creek part of your journey, you would, this advertisement promised, be able travel in comfort by road steamer and go then the rest of the way by horse. It looked so easy, so comfortable.
Francis J. Barnard, the business man and later member of Parliament, had bought six of the new road steamers that Robert Thomson of Edinburgh had invented in 1869. These road steamers were a great improvement because they had rubber tires, making for a more comfortable ride. The tires were “soft-vulcanized rubber, twelve inches in width and five inches in thickness” with a chain of steel over it.
The new means of transport was debated in the BC Legislature and most people thought they were a sign of progress. The benefits would undeniably be huge, including the ability to carry huge weights of freight, for a very low cost in only eight days. Trials in Yale on April 19 proved its worth to the entire satisfaction of the owners. Hopes were high. They started to operate the service some days later.
On May 5, 1871, however, the company announced “that there will be a temporary interruption to the road steamer enterprise in the upper country. It was found that the links holding the steel shoes which form the flexible or outer tires, being made of malleable cast iron, will not answer on the rocky roads of the Colony.”
Alas, the truth was that in actual operation on rough BC trails, they broke down. They were soon removed from the highways and byways (actually more like trails and rugged wagon roads) and one was put into operation in a logging operation on English Bay in Vancouver. Four were sent back to Scotland.
Hazelton would have to wait for another forty years for horseless vehicles to arrive.
