Prince George-North Cariboo.
3 candidates, one seat.

The City of Quesnel says it recognizes the long-standing and ongoing connection of the Southern Dakelh and Tsilhqot'in Peoples to this region, and it names the territory as that of the Lhtako Dene, Nazko, Lhoosk'uz Dené and ʔEsdilagh Nations. The Province lists the Lhtako Dene Nation (Red Bluff Indian Band) at Quesnel as a member of the Carrier Chilcotin Tribal Council, working outside the BC treaty process. The Quesnel and District Museum says it stands on the traditional territory of the Lhtako Dene. On 20 June 2017 the City and the Nation signed a memorandum of understanding, a written agreement to build a working relationship.

Nazko First Nation uses that name on its own website. A history page on the Quesnel and District Museum site gives the Carrier name of the community as Ndazkoh, meaning river flowing from the south, and places Nazko 120 km west of Quesnel. In the east, the Cariboo Regional District writes that Quesnelle Forks lies in the traditional territory of the Secwepemc people, and that the Secwepemc have valued it since time immemorial as a gathering place along a travel route. The Province's 2023 release on the Cariboo Gold mine at Wells names three Nations whose territory the project touches: Lhtako Dené Nation, Williams Lake First Nation and Xatśūll First Nation.

BC Geographical Names quotes Simon Fraser's journal entry for 1 August 1808, “Debarked at Quesnel's River”, and says Fraser named the river for Jules Maurice Quesnel, a North West Company clerk who was 22 years old. The Canadian Encyclopedia writes that in Fraser's time the site was a summer fishing camp of the Carrier people, and that non-Indigenous settlement began in 1860 when the area became the best access to the Cariboo goldfields and Barkerville. The Encyclopedia of British Columbia adds that the town grew as a supply centre for those goldfields.

Parks Canada has set a cairn in a park on Front Street that marks Collins' Overland Telegraph, a plan of 1865 to 1866 to link America and Asia by telegraph cable across Bering Strait. The Clinton and District Historical and Cultural Museum records that Williams Lake was the end of the railway until 1921, when the line was pushed north to Quesnel, and that it reached Prince George in 1952. BC Geographical Names lists Quesnel as a village from 21 March 1928 and as a town from 1 January 1958. The form of its name changed to Quesnel (City) on 21 May 1981.

Gold brought the first large crowds. The Cariboo Regional District says Quesnelle Forks was established in 1859 where the Quesnel and Cariboo Rivers meet, had up to 5000 residents in its busiest years, and by 1875 had 200 Chinese merchants and miners. BC Geographical Names records that Billy Barker found gold at Williams Creek in 1862 and that between 1862 and 1870 over 100,000 people travelled the Cariboo Wagon Road. Barkerville stands 90 km east of Quesnel, southeast of Wells. Parks Canada designated it in 1924 as the centre of the Cariboo gold fields and the end of the wagon road from Yale, completed in 1865.

The Encyclopedia of British Columbia says Likely was a gold mining camp named for John Likely (1842 to 1929), a prospector who lectured fellow miners on Plato and Socrates. The nearby Bullion Pit mine, worked from 1892 to 1942, left a crater 3 km long that mining with water had washed out, and it is considered the world's largest gold mining pit. Horsefly began as Harper's Camp, named for Thaddeus Harper, a pioneer rancher and miner. Its post office opened on 1 July 1897 and took the name Horsefly on 1 July 1921, after settlers drew lots in 1920 and all but one entry favoured that name.

BC Geographical Names says Strathnaver, on the east side of the Fraser between Quesnel and Hixon, was settled in 1912 by Scottish immigrants in a colonization scheme of the Duke of Sutherland. He also held the title Lord Strathnaver, and the project was abandoned soon after his death in 1913. The Strathnaver post office opened on 1 July 1919 and in 1930 stood near the railway station of the Pacific Great Eastern. Hixon post office opened on 1 July 1923 and took its name from Hixon Creek, which was named for a gold prospector of the 1870s.

Nearer the city, the name College Heights was adopted by BC Geographical Names on 27 July 1976 for the west side of Prince George, as an established local name that municipal staff had recommended in 1969. The City of Prince George says its boundary grew to include College Heights, Blackburn and the land north of the Nechako River in 1975, which it calls the single largest expansion. The 2023 commission report later chose to keep Stoner and Hixon in the same district as Quesnel because Highway 97 connects them.

The Encyclopedia of British Columbia says Wells sprang up in 1933 after Fred Wells, a prospector, struck gold. His Cariboo Gold Quartz Mine led to a company town whose population reached 4,000 by the end of the decade. The mine operated until 1967. Unlike nearby Barkerville, Wells stayed a working community. BC Geographical Names records that it was made a district municipality by letters patent effective 29 June 1998, under the name District of Wells.

On 10 October 2023 the Province issued an environmental assessment certificate to Osisko Development Corp. for Cariboo Gold, a proposed underground gold mine in Wells. The Province says it was the first project assessed from start to finish under the 2018 Environmental Assessment Act. The ministers attached 22 legally binding conditions. One requires a new clean drinking water supply for the District of Wells. Another requires work with the Province on cleaning up Wells and the shore of Jack of Clubs Lake, which waste from an earlier mine contaminated with arsenic, cobalt, cadmium, lead and other substances.

The community of Nazko has a voting place in the district, the Nazko Valley Community Centre. The museum history page notes a church in the valley that was built in 1892, and a school opened in 1999 or 2000 for kindergarten to grade 8. In 2007 the area drew the attention of scientists. A paper by J.F. Cassidy and 13 co-authors, published in 2011 in the Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, describes an unusual earthquake sequence that began on 9 October 2007 in central British Columbia, 20 km west of the Nazko cone by the authors' estimate.

The Nazko cone is the most recent volcanic centre in the Anahim volcanic belt, circa 7200 years old. Within 25 hours, eight earthquakes of magnitude 2.3 to 2.9 occurred in a region where none had been recorded before. Over the next three weeks more than 800 smaller earthquakes were located, most at depths of 25 to 31 km, and after about two months almost all activity stopped. The authors interpreted the sequence as magma injected into the lower crust beneath the belt.

Global News reported on 19 March 2014 that the Canfor sawmill in Quesnel was closing after 55 years. More than 200 employees had lost their jobs, and officials said the closure was mainly due to a lack of lumber caused by the mountain pine beetle. A deal between Canfor and West Fraser Timber to swap rights to cut timber kept one mill open in Houston and one in Quesnel.

On 10 May 2019 Global News reported that Tolko Industries would close its Quest Wood sawmill in Quesnel, starting 2 August, and gave 150 as the number of employees affected. Tolko's president and chief executive officer, Brad Thorlakson, said the company did not have enough affordable wood to keep all of its British Columbia mills running. He said Tolko had known that cuts to the yearly harvest limit were coming because of the mountain pine beetle epidemic, and that costly logs, weak lumber markets and wildfires brought the closures sooner than expected.