Portage La Biche the forgotten portage.

For a long time--from 1811 until 1825--this traffic [The Western Fur Trade] passed along the Beaver to the Athabasca River at Lac La Biche, by-passing Edmonton. (1)

The Beaver River was used for many years in transporting supplies to and from the Columbia and posts on the Athabasca and Lesser Slave Lake. (2)

The intense rivalry between the Hudson's Bay Company (HBCo) and the North West Company (NWCo) at the beginning of the 19th century included the search for a direct entry point into the southern Athabasca country, and for a travelable North West Passage. This eventually led fur traders to the Churchill River system and up the Beaver River into present day north-eastern Alberta.

About 1768, William Pink of the HBCo apparently ascended the Beaver River, "a noated River for Beaver," (3) to its source, namely, the picturesque Beaver Lake, which is situated about 5 km. south-east of the present town of Lac La Biche. (4) Apparently Pink was unaware that he was only a short distance from the height of land between Beaver Lake and Lac La Biche that divides the Hudson Bay and Mackenzie River watersheds. It was renowned explorer and geographer, David Thompson of the NWCo, who in 1798 discovered the carry over this height of land which later became known as Portage La Biche. (5) Thompson had instructions to find a route that crossed this "almost imperceptible height of land" dividing the two systems (6) for it marked the north-easterly boundary of Rupert's Land and the limit of the Company's exclusive territory.

Thompson's brigade, consisting of three North canoes and one "light canoe," had set out from Sault Ste. Marie on June 1, 1798. (7) In the final leg of this journey it was Thompson's guide, J.B. Laderoute,

who showed the trader the whereabouts of the portage. According to the Journal, (8) the guide had been awaiting the arrival of the brigade and met them on September 29, 1798, at the junction of the Little Beaver and Amisk rivers, approximately 40 km south of Lac La Biche. Moving on, they arrived at the south end of portage on October 3, 1798. The route obviously had already been known to Laderoute.

Portage La Biche has three components. First are the several hundred metres from the Beaver River to the south end of Field Lake; in this short distance the height of land is found. In his Journal entry for October 3, 1798, Thompson wrote, "the portage leads into a lake & wholey leaves the little Beaver River waters--the Portage is 370 yards long in a st. Course very good--the Canoes lifted over a piece of marshy grassy ground into a bay of [Field] Lake." (9) Second is a paddle of about 4 km. on Field Lake--which is a striking, narrow, glacial spillway channel--to the mouth of Red Deer Brook, and third, exiting Field Lake and meandering along the 5 km to Lac La Biche. Thompson recorded in his Journal that he arrived on the lakeshore at 1:00 p.m., October 4, 1798. His journal entry for that date included his customary, "Thank God" However, he did not conclude this entry until he had also recorded that he gave the men a dram as he had done on the previous day.