"Trails are the most enduring memorials of human transportation and occupation. Long before stone monuments were created, pathways throughout the world were being worn in hardness by human feet. Travellers along the stretch of Highway 97 from Brewster, Washington, to Kamloops, BC, may not know that they are travelling a route as old as humankind's presence in the region. In fact, this north-south valley, a natural corridor linking the two major river systems that drain the Interior Plateu, has served as a transportation route for tens of thousand of years. Trail North traces the origins of this iconic trail among the Indigenous people of the Interior Plateau and its uses by three diffierent fur trading companies, before turning its focus on the period of 1858 to 1868, when the trail was used by miners, packers, and cattlemen as the major entry point into British Columbia from Washington Territory."--Back cover.