Andrew Onderdonk
BCA Photograph No. 02917
BCA Negative No. A-01321
Photo: B.C. Archives

When Andrew Onderdonk arrived at Yale with his family in early April, 1880, he was thirty-two years old, and already an engineer of demonstrated ability. He had just completed the works related to the San Francisco sea wall in that city, and his efforts to obtain the contracts of the Canadian government for the construction of the railway (in the most difficult terrain of British Columbia) were backed by prominent American financiers. Onderdonk brought his whole family to Yale and built a fine residence there overlooking the Fraser river, a bit to the south of Yale.

On May 14, 1880, in the presence of the Dominion Agent, the Honorable Joseph Trutch, Onderdonk commenced work on Contract 60 by blasting the first bit of rock at the site of the First Tunnel, within a mile of Yale. It would soon be a familiar sound to the residents of Yale, as many tunnels and galleries were carved out of the rock walls along the Fraser river.