McGowan's War
1858 CE.
Shown on the map at 49.563°, -121.431°.
McGowan's War was a bloodless war that took place in Yale, British Columbia in the fall of 1858. The conflict posed a threat to the newly established British authority on the British Columbia mainland (which had only just been declared a colony the previous summer), at the onset of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush. It was called Ned McGowan's War after one of the conflict's main antagonists. Ned McGowan was one of a group of associated miners at Hill's Bar, the richest and first gold-bearing bar of the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, at which a ramshackle "town" had sprung up, 5 miles below Yale. Hill's Bar was under the control of McGowan's party of former San Franciscan firemen associated with the Law and Order Party, who had flourished from the claim they had named "The Boatmen of San Francisco". Yale, on the other hand, had fallen into the sway of members of the notorious San Francisco Vigilance Committee, which had ruled San Francisco through summary execution of suspected criminals.
Text from the Wikipedia article McGowan's War, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.