---
title: "History of Prince George, BC | PG Pulse"
description: "A timeline of Prince George history, from the Lheidli T’enneh homeland at the confluence to a fur post, a railway boomtown and a northern capital."
url: https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/history/
markdown: https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/history.md
site: PG Pulse (https://princegeorgepulse.ca), The pulse of Prince George, British Columbia
generated: 2026-10-16T16:07:19.671Z
---

# History of Prince George, BC

A timeline of Prince George history, from the Lheidli T’enneh homeland at the confluence to a fur post, a railway boomtown and a northern capital.

Updated September 30, 2026

![Black and white photograph of the young city of Prince George in May 1919, with low wooden buildings and cleared land](https://princegeorgepulse-media.s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/prince-george/guides/black-white-photograph-young-city-prince-george-may-e18c31-1280.webp)

Photo: J. Simonson, 1919, public domain via Wikimedia Commons

## At a glance

- The confluence of the Fraser and Nechako rivers is the homeland of the Lheidli T’enneh, the ‘people of the confluence of the two rivers’.
- Simon Fraser of the North West Company built the Fort George trading post here in 1807.
- The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway reached town in 1914 and the City of Prince George incorporated on March 6, 1915.
- Pulp mills in the 1960s and a university in the 1990s turned a sawmill town into northern BC’s service capital.
- The 2021 census counted 76,708 residents in the city and 89,490 in the wider census agglomeration.

Prince George is a young city on a very old landscape. Its modern story is barely a century long, but people have gathered where the Nechako River meets the Fraser for thousands of years. This overview walks through the major eras, with links to deeper guides along the way.

## Before the fur trade

The confluence sits in the homeland of the **Lheidli T’enneh**, a Dakelh (Carrier) people whose name means “the people from the confluence of the two rivers.” Families moved through the territory with the seasons, fishing salmon on the rivers, hunting and trapping in the surrounding forest, and gathering berries and plants. Archaeological evidence of fishing camps has been found along both rivers and in the Beaverly area west of today’s city.

Trails connected the confluence to the wider world long before Europeans arrived. One of them, the Lheidli route the newcomers later called the Giscome Portage, was known as _Lhedesti_, “the shortcut,” a low overland link between the Fraser and the Arctic-bound waters of Summit Lake.

Read more in our guide to the [Lheidli T’enneh First Nation](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/lheidli-tenneh/).

## Fort George: a quiet fur post (1807–1900s)

In 1807, **Simon Fraser** of the North West Company built a small post near the confluence and named it Fort George after King George III. After the company merged with the Hudson’s Bay Company in 1821, the post carried on under the HBC flag. For most of the 1800s it was a minor station; Fort St. James on Stuart Lake was the administrative centre of the New Caledonia fur district.

Big events passed Fort George by. The Cariboo Gold Rush of the 1860s was centred far to the south at Barkerville, and the Collins Overland Telegraph line of 1865–67 took a route west from Quesnel. Over time, many Lheidli T’enneh families settled in a village beside the post, which made trading and preparing furs easier.

## Railway fever and the three Georges (1903–1915)

Everything changed after 1903, when word spread that the **Grand Trunk Pacific Railway** would cross the continent through the confluence. Land speculators rushed in and two rival townsites were surveyed in 1909:

- **South Fort George**, on the Fraser near the old HBC post, served by sternwheelers of the BC Express Company.
- **Fort George** (often called Central Fort George), about 3 km to the northwest on the Nechako, heavily advertised across Canada and Britain by promoter George Hammond.

By 1913 each townsite had roughly 1,500 residents, supplying thousands of railway construction workers. Both expected the station. Instead, the railway bought the 1,366-acre Fort George Indian Reserve No. 1 that lay between them and built its own townsite, named **Prince George**. The Lheidli T’enneh were moved off that land in 1913, a history covered in detail in our [Lheidli T’enneh guide](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/lheidli-tenneh/).

The first train rolled in during January 1914. On **March 6, 1915**, the railway townsite was incorporated as the City of Prince George, and a plebiscite that May confirmed the name. The full rivalry is told in [Fort George and the railway boom](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/fort-george-and-the-railway-boom/).

![A hand-drawn 1910 map showing the Fort George and South Fort George townsites and the reserve between them](https://princegeorgepulse-media.s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/prince-george/guides/hand-drawn-1910-map-showing-fort-george-south-b769b7-1075.webp)

A 1910 map of the rival townsites, with the reserve that became Prince George between them. Photo: F. E. Runnalls, CC BY 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

## War, depression and a long wait (1914–1945)

The boom collapsed almost as soon as the city was born. The First World War drew young men overseas, construction of the Pacific Great Eastern Railway stopped, and the 1918 influenza pandemic claimed at least fifty lives in the area. The 1920s were slow, and the Great Depression hit the sawmills hard: regional lumber output fell from about 105 million board feet in 1929 to roughly 15 million by 1932.

The Second World War brought a reversal. An army camp built at the foot of Cranbrook Hill housed up to 6,000 soldiers, and the population grew from about 2,000 in 1941 to roughly 3,800 by 1945. A few camp buildings still stand around the city.

## The hub is finally built (1945–1970s)

Post-war rebuilding created huge demand for lumber, and the spruce forests around Prince George were ready. In 1952 the Pacific Great Eastern (later BC Rail) finally linked the city to the south coast, and Highways 16 and 97 made Prince George the crossroads of northern BC.

The 1960s were transformative. Three pulp mills opened, one in 1964 and two in 1966, bringing well-paid jobs and new subdivisions such as Spruceland, Lakewood, Perry and Highglen. Central Fort George had joined the city in 1953; in the mid-1970s the boundaries grew again to take in the Hart to the north, Pineview to the south and South Fort George.

## Mr. PG: the city’s mascot (1960–today)

Every visitor arriving on Highway 16 or 97 meets **Mr. PG**, the lumberjack-style figure who has become the unofficial face of the city. He was built in **1960** as a symbol of how much Prince George owed to the forest industry. The first Mr. PG was made of wood and debuted on **May 8, 1960**, at a conference at the Simon Fraser Inn. In his early years he travelled to promote the city, appearing in the May Day parade, at the Kelowna Regatta and the PNE in Vancouver, and in the 1963 Grey Cup parade.

In **1970** Mr. PG took up his permanent post at the junction of **Highways 16 and 97**, where he still stands. The wooden original was later replaced by a version made mostly of painted metal, about **8.1 m (26.7 ft)** tall. His round head is, and always has been, a spherical plastic septic tank. The City **trademarked** Mr. PG in **1985**, and on July 6, **2009**, Canada Post put him on a 54-cent stamp in its first **Roadside Attractions** series, alongside the Signpost Forest in Watson Lake and the giant inukshuk in Hay River.

He still takes part in civic life: during the COVID-19 pandemic in April 2020 he held a flag emblazoned with a heart. A photo with Mr. PG is a Prince George rite of passage; see [things to do](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/visit/things-to-do/).

![Mr. PG, the city's tall lumberjack-style mascot, standing beside a spruce tree](https://princegeorgepulse-media.s3.ca-central-1.amazonaws.com/prince-george/guides/mr-pg-citys-tall-lumberjack-style-mascot-standing-a1b925-1280.webp)

Mr. PG at the junction of Highways 16 and 97. Photo: Brenden Van Stolk, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

## A university town and a northern capital (1990–today)

A grassroots campaign led to the **University of Northern British Columbia**, created by provincial legislation in 1990. Its hilltop campus on Cranbrook Hill opened in 1994. The College of New Caledonia (founded 1969), the Northern Health authority and the BC Cancer centre for the north helped turn Prince George into the region’s centre for health and education. Read more in [economy and industry](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/economy-and-industry/).

Recent decades brought challenges too: the mountain pine beetle epidemic, mill closures, and a Nechako River ice jam in the winter of 2007–08 that flooded low-lying areas near the confluence and prompted an unusual warm-water melting project.

In 2015 the city marked its centennial by hosting the **Canada Winter Games**, with the Lheidli T’enneh as the first official host First Nation in the Games’ history. That same year, Fort George Park, site of the old village and fur post, was renamed **Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park**.

## Quick timeline

| Year | Event |
| --- | --- |
| Time immemorial | Lheidli T’enneh live and travel throughout the confluence territory |
| 1807 | Simon Fraser builds the Fort George trading post |
| 1821 | North West Company merges into the Hudson’s Bay Company |
| 1909 | South Fort George and Fort George townsites laid out |
| 1911–1913 | Reserve No. 1 sold to the railway; Lheidli T’enneh relocated |
| 1914 | First Grand Trunk Pacific trains reach Prince George |
| 1915 | City of Prince George incorporated on March 6 |
| 1952 | Pacific Great Eastern Railway arrives from the south |
| 1960 | Mr. PG is built as a symbol of the forest industry |
| 1964–1966 | Three pulp mills open |
| 1970 | Mr. PG moves to his permanent spot at the Highway 16 and 97 junction |
| 1985 | The City trademarks Mr. PG |
| 1990 | UNBC established; campus opens in 1994 |
| 2009 | Mr. PG appears on a Canada Post stamp |
| 2015 | Centennial and the Canada Winter Games |

## Keep exploring

- How the land itself formed: [Glacial Lake Prince George](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/glacial-lake-prince-george/)
- Where people live today: [Prince George neighbourhoods](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/neighbourhoods/)
- History you can visit: [things to do in Prince George](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/visit/things-to-do/)

## Common questions

**When was Prince George founded?**

The fur trade post of Fort George was built in 1807, the railway townsite of Prince George was laid out in 1913, and the city was incorporated on March 6, 1915. The Lheidli T’enneh have lived at the confluence for thousands of years before any of those dates.

**Who is Prince George named after?**

The railway gave three explanations over the years: to distinguish the new townsite from nearby Fort George, to honour King George V, and to honour his son Prince George, later Duke of Kent. Residents approved the name 153 to 13 in a 1915 plebiscite.

**Why is Prince George called the northern capital?**

Because it is the largest city in northern British Columbia and the region’s hub for health care, post-secondary education, government services, transportation and industry support.

**Who is Mr. PG?**

Mr. PG is Prince George’s mascot, a lumberjack-style figure built in 1960 to celebrate the forest industry. He has stood at the junction of Highways 16 and 97 since 1970, was trademarked by the City in 1985 and appeared on a Canada Post stamp in 2009. Today’s version is about 8.1 m tall and made mostly of painted metal.

**Where can I learn more about Prince George history?**

The Exploration Place museum in Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park, the Central BC Railway and Forestry Museum and the Prince George Public Library’s local history collections are the best places to start.

## Sources

- [Prince George, British Columbia (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_George,_British_Columbia)
- [Lheidli T'enneh Band (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lheidli_T%CA%BCenneh_Band)
- [Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Trunk_Pacific_Railway)
- [Geotour Guide for Prince George, British Columbia (Geological Survey of Canada Open File 5559)](https://mineralsed.ca/site/assets/files/3451/princegeorgegeotourguide.pdf)
- [Mr. PG (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._PG)
- [Northern roadside attractions grace Canada Post stamps (CBC News)](https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/northern-roadside-attractions-grace-canada-post-stamps-1.852238)
- [University of Northern British Columbia (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Northern_British_Columbia)

## Official links

- [City of Prince George](https://www.princegeorge.ca/)
- [Lheidli T'enneh First Nation](https://www.lheidli.ca/)
- [The Exploration Place museum](https://theexplorationplace.com/)
- [Tourism Prince George](https://tourismpg.com/)

## On this page

- [Before the fur trade](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/history/#before-the-fur-trade)
- [Fort George: a quiet fur post (1807–1900s)](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/history/#fort-george-a-quiet-fur-post-18071900s)
- [Railway fever and the three Georges (1903–1915)](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/history/#railway-fever-and-the-three-georges-19031915)
- [War, depression and a long wait (1914–1945)](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/history/#war-depression-and-a-long-wait-19141945)
- [The hub is finally built (1945–1970s)](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/history/#the-hub-is-finally-built-19451970s)
- [Mr. PG: the city’s mascot (1960–today)](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/history/#mr-pg-the-citys-mascot-1960today)
- [A university town and a northern capital (1990–today)](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/history/#a-university-town-and-a-northern-capital-1990today)
- [Quick timeline](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/history/#quick-timeline)
- [Keep exploring](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/history/#keep-exploring)

## More in explore pg

- [Lheidli T’enneh First Nation: people of the confluence The Lheidli T’enneh, on whose traditional territory Prince George stands: their name, history, the 1913 removal and Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park.](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/lheidli-tenneh/)
- [Fort George and the railway boom: how Prince George began Simon Fraser’s 1807 fur post, the South Fort George and Fort George rivalry, the Grand Trunk Pacific’s 1914 arrival and 1915 incorporation.](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/fort-george-and-the-railway-boom/)
- [Glacial Lake Prince George: why the city sits in a bowl How ice sheets, a vanished glacial lake and two rivers carved the Prince George bowl, its silt cutbanks and the benches the city is built on.](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/glacial-lake-prince-george/)
- [Geography of Prince George: rivers, plateau and forest Where Prince George sits: the Fraser–Nechako confluence, the Interior Plateau, sub-boreal spruce forest, Tabor Mountain, lakes and the Arctic divide.](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/geography-and-rivers/)
- [Prince George climate: weather by month, records and normals Prince George climate normals for 1991–2020: monthly highs and lows, snowfall, rain, sunshine and record temperatures, plus tips for every season.](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/climate/)
- [Prince George neighbourhoods: a guide to the city’s areas A guide to Prince George neighbourhoods: Downtown, the Crescents, the VLA, College Heights, the Hart, South Fort George, Miworth and Blackburn.](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/neighbourhoods/)

## Data

Machine-readable data behind this page, from the free PG Pulse API (https://princegeorgepulse.ca/developers/).

### Guide facts, FAQ and sources

Source: [PG Pulse guides (plain-language guides with links to official sources)](https://princegeorgepulse.ca/). Licence: CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Updated 2026-09-30T00:00:00.000Z.
JSON: https://princegeorgepulse.ca/api/v1/guides/explore/history?fields=summary,faq,officialLinks,sources,updated

- **summary**: The confluence of the Fraser and Nechako rivers is the homeland of the Lheidli T’enneh, the ‘people of the confluence of the two rivers’., Simon Fraser of the North West Company built the Fort George trading post here in 1807., The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway reached town in 1914 and the City of Prince George incorporated on March 6, 1915., Pulp mills in the 1960s and a university in the 1990s turned a sawmill town into northern BC’s service capital., The 2021 census counted 76,708 residents in the city and 89,490 in the wider census agglomeration.
- **updated**: 2026-09-30T00:00:00.000Z

#### faq

| q | a |
| --- | --- |
| When was Prince George founded? | The fur trade post of Fort George was built in 1807, the railway townsite of Prince George was laid out in 1913, and the city was incorporated on March 6, 1915… |
| Who is Prince George named after? | The railway gave three explanations over the years: to distinguish the new townsite from nearby Fort George, to honour King George V, and to honour his son Pri… |
| Why is Prince George called the northern capital? | Because it is the largest city in northern British Columbia and the region’s hub for health care, post-secondary education, government services, transportation… |
| Who is Mr. PG? | Mr. PG is Prince George’s mascot, a lumberjack-style figure built in 1960 to celebrate the forest industry. He has stood at the junction of Highways 16 and 97 … |
| Where can I learn more about Prince George history? | The Exploration Place museum in Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park, the Central BC Railway and Forestry Museum and the Prince George Public Library’s local history … |


#### officialLinks

| label | url |
| --- | --- |
| City of Prince George | https://www.princegeorge.ca/ |
| Lheidli T'enneh First Nation | https://www.lheidli.ca/ |
| The Exploration Place museum | https://theexplorationplace.com/ |
| Tourism Prince George | https://tourismpg.com/ |


#### sources

| title | url |
| --- | --- |
| Prince George, British Columbia (Wikipedia) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_George,_British_Columbia |
| Lheidli T'enneh Band (Wikipedia) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lheidli_T%CA%BCenneh_Band |
| Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (Wikipedia) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Trunk_Pacific_Railway |
| Geotour Guide for Prince George, British Columbia (Geological Survey of Canada Open File 5559) | https://mineralsed.ca/site/assets/files/3451/princegeorgegeotourguide.pdf |
| Mr. PG (Wikipedia) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._PG |
| Northern roadside attractions grace Canada Post stamps (CBC News) | https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/northern-roadside-attractions-grace-canada-post-stamps-1.852238 |
| University of Northern British Columbia (Wikipedia) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Northern_British_Columbia |

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Markdown version of https://princegeorgepulse.ca/explore/history/. Guide for AI agents: https://princegeorgepulse.ca/llms.txt. Free API: https://princegeorgepulse.ca/developers/