Andrew T. Jamieson is the first European to discover gold in the Bridge River Valley and was a member of the provincial legislature for Lillooet, BC. In 1865, he and a government-sponsored party completed a two-month inspection tour of "that section of country lying between the Chilcoaten and Bridge Rivers" and reported that they had found paying quantities of gold in various locations on the headwaters of the Bridge River, near present-day Bralorne, BC. After word of Jamieson’s party striking gold in the area got across the colony, more people joined the hunt. Even so, widespread gold mining wouldn’t take off in the region until the 1890s, as gold claims were still quite profitable in the more easily accessible Fraser Canyon and other areas of British Columbia. Jamieson settled in Lillooet, BC and became a provincial member of parliament for this constituency.