The new settlers in the late 1800s included John Currie, who was listed as a permanent resident in 1885. John emigrated from Scotland to Quebec with his family at the age of seventeen and soon ran away from home and struck off for the California gold fields. He returned to Pemberton to pre-empt land with his partner McDonald. John settled in Pemberton with his native wife, Seraphine Joseph of Mt. Currie, and they ran Pemberton's first post office, serving a handful of settlers. Andrew Joseph was one of the first mail carriers, who in all weather brought mail in from Lillooet. In 1873, Marcus Smith, the leader of the first railway survey party in this area, supervised a survey that brought him, Anderson and Seton Lakes to Lillooet, following the route the Pacific Great Eastern Railway would take forty years later and which was used for the construction of the Lillooet Cattle Trail to the mouth of the Seymour River in North Vancouver. Completed in 1878, the cattle trail was the largest infrastructure project by the new province and ended in disaster for the only herd of cattle driven over it. This route became known, after rebuilding by John Currie and his native crew, as the Pemberton Trail and was the only route to the coast.