Adopted in the 15th Report of the Geographic Board of Canada, 31 March 1917. Confirmed 5 July 1951 on 93M.

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

Headwaters understood to be the lake in NE 1/4 Lot 4207, then flowing through Broman, Old Woman and Conrad Lakes, thence southerly & easterly, making a sharp turn in SW 1/4 Lot 3536, thence flowing through Bulkley Lake, etc.

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

Labelled "Bulkley or Wastonquah River" on Trutch's 1871 map of BC.

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

"From this point to the mouth of the Watsonkwa (called the Ahgwilget by the Kiticsans Indians, now known as the Bulkley)...." (Extracts from the report of A.L. Poudrier, PLS, December 1891)

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

After Colonel Charles S. Bulkley, US Army Telegraph Corps, engineer-in-chief of the Western Union Extension Company, 1864-67, during construction of the Collins Overland Telegraph; his party wintered their horses here in 1865-66. The project to link the Russian and American telegraph systems by way of Alaska, the Bering Sea and Siberia, was abandoned upon the successful completion of the trans-Atlantic cable in 1866; the line by that time had been extended beyond the Bulkley valley and NW along the Kispiox River to about Swan Lake. Colonel Bulkley has been described as "an able and experienced man, universally respected and trusted". See also BC Historical Quarterly 10: 187, pp 196, 209, 212.

Source: Provincial Archives of BC "Place Names File" compiled 1945-1950 by A.G. Harvey from various sources, with subsequent additions