Ashnola River
Feature Type:River - Watercourse of variable size, which has tributaries and flows into a body of water or a larger watercourse.
Status: Official
Name Authority: BC Geographical Names Office
Relative Location: Flows NE from Washington into Similkameen River, Similkameen Division Yale Land District
Latitude-Longitude: 49°13'28"N, 119°58'20"W at the approximate mouth of this feature.
Datum: WGS84
NTS Map: 82E/4
Related Maps:
Origin Notes and History:

Ashnola River adopted by Geographic Board of Canada in 1917, as labelled on BC map 1EM, 1915; crosses from Washington into BC at 49º00' - 120º23' on 92H/1.

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

"Nais-nu-loh / Ashtnolow" referenced 1860 in Lord, I, p.321 (Provincial Archives citation). Labelled "Ashnoulou River" on Trutch's 1871 map of British Columbia; "Ashnola: a body of Okinagan in southwest BC, population 37 in 1911..." (Handbook of Indians of Canada, Geographic Board of Canada, 1912); "Ashnola means 'white waters'..." (Wild Land of the Ashnola by Jennifer Maynard, published in BC Motorist magazine July-Aug 1971, p.14).

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

This name is found, spelt "Ashtnoulou", as early as 1861. It probably comes not from Chief Ashnola John, who was alive in the present century, but from an early Indian village named "Acnulox".

Source: Akrigg, Helen B. and Akrigg, G.P.V; British Columbia Place Names; Sono Nis Press, Victoria 1986 /or University of British Columbia Press 1997