About

“The community of Skatin (or SkookumChuck) is located on the east side of the Lillooet River, on the 19-Mile Post of the old Harrison-Lillooet wagon road (about 35 kilometres from the head of Harrison Lake). Before the arrival of European settlers, this community was considered to be the largest on the lower Lillooet River, comparable in size to the pre-contact village of present-day Mount Currie (or Lilwat’ul). A moderately sized waterfall on the Lillooet River, about 1 kilometre north of the community, had a significant effect on the size of the community in prehistoric times as well as today. The fall is now commonly known as SkookumChuck Rapids, but the Ucwalmicwts [oo-kwal-MEWK] (Lower Lillooet dialect) word for this fall is qmemps (k-MEMP-sh). This site was and remains to be a very abundant fishery, the most abundant on the Lillooet River. Colonial settlers and ethnographers have noted it in historic documents as early as the late 1850’s.