Adopted 6 October 1936 on 92 I, Ashcroft, as long-established on government maps, including Geological Survey sheet 557, Kamloops, 1895; Department of Interior sheet 111, Kamloops, 1916, etc.

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

Originally Riviére de la Cache; named by French Canadian fur traders, because of a camping place and cache (hiding place) for goods near the mouth of this creek. The Pacific Fur Company's brigade trail, established in 1811 between Fort Okanogan on the Columbia River and Fort Kamloops, went past this place, as did the Northwest Company's brigade trail, established in 1813 between Fort St. James and Fort Kamloops, and even later, the Hudson's Bay Company's trail, established in 1826 between New Caledonia and Fort Vancouver. Cache Creek was first labelled on an 1833 sketch by David Douglas, who was travelling with a party taking a shipment of cattle from Fort Okanogan to Fort Alexandria. Labelled on Black's 1835 map. (At that time the main brigade trail followed the North Thompson River to about Little Fort then turned west along the Bridge Lake route to Lac la Hache; the trail was altered in 1842 to the Kamloops Lake-Copper Creek-Loon Lake-Green Lake route). A.C. Anderson's 1867 map, showing explorations between 1832 and 1851, labels "R. à la Cache". Note that these maps pre-date the Cariboo gold discoveries, and would tend to refute the more romantic legends about a cache of stolen gold.

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

Lieutenant R.C. Mayne, RN, in his account of his journey from Fort Kamloops to Pavilion Lake in 1859, mentions, "... we left the Thompson and camped for the night by the side of Riviére de la Cache, a small stream flowing into the Bonaparte".

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

Name taken from an early robbery. A pack train, bringing out a treasure in gold...was attacked by desperadoes. The gold was cached to make escape easier....the robbers all died before the gold was recovered. (Milestones on the Mighty Fraser, p.136).

Source: included with note

..... early mention of Cache Creek, many years before the discovery of gold, demolishes Gosnell's explanation that miners cached provisions here, and similarly the story, told in loving detail in Winnifred Futcher's "The Great North Road to the Cariboo" of how a lone gunman, having murdered a miner travelling south from Barkerville and stolen his eighty pounds of gold, was seriously wounded by a pursuing settler, cached his stolen gold and disappeared forever, leaving only a riderless horse with a bloody saddle as evidence of his fate. The story has all the marks of a fine Cariboo yarn but is nothing more. All we can say is that at some time in or before 1833 somebody cached something in the vicinity of Cache Creek.
Today the word "cache" often refers to a place where supplies have been deposited on a raised platform out of the reach of wild animals. The meaning of the word in French however is "a hiding place," and the cache of an early fur trader was exactly that. A round piece of turf about eighteen inches across was removed, leaving the mouth for a large bottle-shaped excavation. This excavation was lined with dry branches and the cached goods were then inserted. Finally some earth and the round piece of turf were put on top and the surplus earth all carefully removed. If the job had been done expertly, possible marauders would see no evidence that they were passing a cache.

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

The story of a robbery and a cache of gold would appear to be a legend....

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

There are various wild and wooly stories about Cariboo stage robbers hiding their loot here, and of Donald McLean caching gold in the hills before leaving for the Chilcotin 'war' and his own death. In actual fact, it was already named on Black's 1835 map, long before gold was discovered. It probably marks the collection point for furs bound for Thompsons' River Post (Kamloops), when French was the traders' language. (Mary Balf, Kamloops Museum, 1978)

Source: included with note