The Quesnel River is a major tributary of the Fraser River in the Cariboo District of central British Columbia. It begins at the outflow of Quesnel Lake, at the town of Likely and flows for about 100km to its confluence with the Fraser at the city of Quesnel. The sources of Quesnel Lake, a multi-armed freshwater fjord that is one of the largest natural lakes in the Cariboo Mountains are many, but include the Mitchell River and Niagara Creek (which despite its name, is very much a river), both of which have their sources in the Cariboo Mountains which frame the upper arms of the lake. Also contributing to the flow of the Quesnel River is the Horsefly River, which begins at the outflow of the lake of the same name, at the town of the same name, Horsefly.
History
Just downstream from the outlet of Quesnel Lake, at the confluence of the Cariboo River, is the historically-important ghost town of Quesnel Forks, aka "the Forks", which was a junction point of the Quesnel and Cariboo Rivers. Various trails and wagon roads leading to the Cariboo goldfields lay across the low-hill range north of Quesnel Forks in the basin of the Cottonwood River. Both the Lillooet to Fort Alexandria wagon road and the later Cariboo Wagon Road came by Quesnel Forks but preferred to follow the valley of the Quesnel River to Quesnel and then east from there to the gold towns of Barkerville and Wells. The river took its name from Jules-Maurice Quesnel, who explored this region with Simon Fraser in the early 19th century.
