Just a few decades later in the 1880's, the construction of the Canadian Pacific railway claimed the lives of an estimated three migrant Chinese workers for every one mile of track that was laid through the canyon's deadly terrain.

The Fraser gold rush of the 1850's brought prospectors by the tens of thousands to the newly-founded Colony of British Columbia seeking their fortunes hundreds of them finding only starvation, madness and an untimely death in the unforgiving wilderness of the province's interior.

People have lived on the river since time immemorial, and in that time the raging waters and treacherous landscape of the Fraser Canyon have witnessed more than their fair share of human tragedy.

The banks of the Fraser are steeped in history. Today, Hell's Gate is home to a delightful tourist attraction where visitors travelling the Gold Rush Trail can stop to enjoy an exhilarating airtram ride through the canyon to view this majestic site from the safety of an observation deck perched more than 150 meters below. Ever since, the churning waters of this narrow, 35 meter passage between the sheer rock walls of the Fraser Canyon have been known as Hell's Gate.

When the famed explorer Simon Fraser first portaged an 'awesome gorge' during his 1808 exploration of the river that would one day bear his name, he commented in his journal that his expedition had travelled ' where no human being should ever venture for surely we have encountered the gates of hell'. A whiff of cigar smoke hanging in the corner of an empty restaurant, strange disembodied voices whispering on the wind, the apparition of a lonely little girl wandering the halls of the Upper Terminal these are just some of strange and ghostly phenomena that have been reported at the Hell's Gate Airtram, rumoured to be one of the Fraser River's most haunted attractions.

Ghost adventures gates of hell house