Adopted 19 December 1961 on 83D/11, as labelled on the map of British North America published in "The Northwest Passage by Land" by Milton & Cheadle, 1864, and as labelled on BC map 3J, 1942.

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

Named in 1863 by Dr. W.B.Cheadle, after his companion Viscount Milton (1839-1877); they travelled this way on their journey to the Pacific Ocean. "...gained the watershed of the Thompson. This was occupied by a small marshy lake marked Albreda lake on the map filling the bottom of the ravine. It appeared to have been drained formerly by a stream flowing from either extremity, like the Summit lake between lake Lillooet and Anderson lake in British Columbia, but the northern end was now blocked up by an old grass-grown beaver dam and its waters escaped only towards the south. We continued to follow the stream thus formed, which was reinforced by several branches from the westward, and saw before us a magnificent mountain covered with glaciers and apparently blocking up the valley before us. To this Cheadle gave the name Mount Milton." (The North-West Passage by Land, 1864, 5th edition, p.274 )

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

William Viscount Milton was born 27 July 1839 and therefore celebrated his 24th birthday while descending the North Thompson River. He was the eldest son of the 6th Earl Fitzwilliam. He returned to Canada in 1872 and lived with his wife and child in a 'shack' .... about 6 miles west of Fort William, Ontario. During the winter of 1872-73 the house was burned to the ground and the occupants barely escaped with their lives. Viscount Milton died 17 January 1877, predeceasing his father. He had a 'delicate frame and frequent illness' and 'was compelled by increasing illness to resign the seat in parliament.' Cheadle's journal discloses him as a delicate youth of 24, passionate, obstinate and unreasonable. The present Earl Fitzwilliam is Milton's eldest son, William Charles de Meuron Wentworth Fitzwilliam, who succeeded to the title on the death of his grandfather in 1902. ("Cheadle's Journal" by James White, Canadian Alpine Journal, vol XIV, 1924, p.90).

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

One of the most unusual expeditions in the history of British Columbia occurred in the summer of 1863, when the epileptic English nobleman William Wentworth Fitzwilliam, Viscount Milton (1839-77), his personal physician Dr. Walter Cheadle, an utterly useless classical scholar named O'Beirne, and a part Indian guide and the latter's Indian wife and son, entered the province by the Yellowhead Pass and found their way down the trackless wilderness of the Albreda and North Thompson Rivers until, emaciated and starving, they arrived at Kamloops. The expurged version of their travels, "The North-West Passage by Land", was published in 1865 and being a highly readable book, went into a number of editions.

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