Ella Frye Creek
Feature Type:Creek (1) - Watercourse, usually smaller than a river.
Status: Official
Name Authority: BC Geographical Names Office
Relative Location: Flows SE into head of North Thompson River, SW of Valemount, Kamloops Division Yale Land District
Latitude-Longitude: 52°38'09"N, 119°40'02"W at the approximate mouth of this feature.
Datum: WGS84
NTS Map: 83D/12
Origin Notes and History:

Adopted 22 February 1963 on 83D, as labelled on BC Lands' map 3J, 1942 & 1962.

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

For forty-one years the indomitable Ella Frye trapped alone through 200 square miles of wilderness around the headwaters of the North Thompson River. Her explanation to her mother for habitually traveling without a rifle was that it would be full of snow anyway, and so of little use. A fellow trapper who had to travel through her territory to reach his own line tells the story: On his first trip in, as he approached one of her cabins he heard loud bellowing while still some distance away. When he came in sight, he saw Ella beating off a bear with a stick about four feet long. She yelled "Do you have a gun?" As it happened, he did not, so snatched a piece of wood for a weapon just as the bear lunged for Ella. She fell backwards but managed to hit the animal on the head as she went down. Her blow must have been powerful -- it halted him long enough for the man to club him behind the ears. The bear sank, stunned for a minute. Before he could recover Ella rushed for her hunting knife and cut his jugular. After "the tumult and the shouting died" they estimated his weight at only about four hundred pounds, but still, an ominous opponent against a five-foot, three-inch woman armed with only a stick. (information provided May 2001 by M. Poulton Dunford, author of "North River", Sonotek Publishing Company, Merritt, 2000.)

Source: included with note

After a prospector and trapper.

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

Headwaters at 52 39 - 119 45 on 83D/12.

Source: Canadian Geographical Names Database, Ottawa