Siska, also known historically as Cisco, is a locality in the Fraser Canyon

Fraser Canyon

The Fraser Canyon is an 84 km landform of the Fraser River where it descends rapidly through narrow rock gorges in the Coast Mountains en route from the Interior Plateau of British Columbia to the Fraser Valley...

 of British Columbia

British Columbia

British Columbia is the westernmost of Canada's provinces and is known for its natural beauty, as reflected in its Latin motto, Splendor sine occasu . Its name was chosen by Queen Victoria in 1858...

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 9.4 kilometres south of the town of Lytton

Lytton, British Columbia

Lytton in British Columbia, Canada, sits at the confluence of the Thompson River and Fraser River on the east side of the Fraser. The location has been inhabited by the Nlaka'pamux people for over 10,000 years, and is one of the earliest locations settled by non-natives in the Southern Interior of...

. It is at Siska that the Canadian Pacific

Canadian Pacific Railway

The Canadian Pacific Railway , formerly also known as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railway founded in 1881 and now operated by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001...

 and Canadian National Railway

Canadian National Railway

The Canadian National Railway Company is a Canadian Class I railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec. CN's slogan is "North America's Railroad"....

s switch from one side of the river to the other, due to the impossibility of both railways occupying the same bank of the Fraser due to the narrow and steep terrain. The resulting pair of bridges

Cisco Bridges

The Cisco Bridges are a pair of railroad bridges at Siska near Lytton, British Columbia, Canada. The Canadian Pacific Railway and Canadian National Railway both follow the route of the Fraser River, one on each side, and the routes exchange sides at this point...

, with the CNR bridge just upstream of the CPR's, and the CPR's bridge's west foot entering the Cantilever Bar Tunnel into the side of Cisco Bluff, remains one of the most famous images of the CPR's route through British Columbia today and is easily viewable from the adjacent Trans-Canada Highway

Trans-Canada Highway

The Trans-Canada Highway is a federal-provincial highway system that joins the ten provinces of Canada. It is, along with the Trans-Siberian Highway and Australia's Highway 1, one of the world's longest national highways, with the main route spanning 8,030 km...

.
Siska is also home to the Siska First Nation

Siska First Nation

The Siska First Nation is a Nlaka'pamux First Nations government located in the Fraser Canyon region of the Canadian province of British Columbia. It is a member of the Nicola Tribal Association, which are two of three tribal councils of the Nlaka'pamux people...

, a local government of the Nlaka'pamux

Nlaka'pamux

The Nlaka'pamux , commonly called "the Thompson", and also Thompson River Salish, Thompson Salish, Thompson River Indians or Thompson River people) are an indigenous First Nations/Native American people of the Interior Salish language group in southern British Columbia...

 peoples who have lived in the Fraser Canyon for thousands of years. The Siska First Nation rancherie

Rancherie

A Rancherie is a First Nations residential area of an Indian Reserve in colloquial English throughout the Canadian province of British Columbia...

 - main residential area - is just off the highway on a broad benchland just below the CPR bridge, and has and general store, the museum and band office, plus other band services. One of the band's economic ventures, a project in applied ethnobotany

Ethnobotany

Ethnobotany is the scientific study of the relationships that exist between people and plants....

 intended to use traditional knowledge to help preserve the land against logging extraction through economic competition for forest leases, is the nurturing and harvesting of traditional food and other plant materials in the surrounding wilderness, made into health and bath products and teas and other products.

Siska is the northernmost point in the Fraser Canyon where bigleaf maple

Bigleaf Maple

Acer macrophyllum is a large deciduous tree in the genus Acer.It can grow to be up to 35 m tall, but more commonly grows 15 m to 20 m tall. It is native to western North America, mostly near the Pacific coast, from southernmost Alaska to southern California...

 is found. Other vegetation is noticeably denser than at Lytton, part of the transition from dry Interior to coast rainforest ecotypes that begins from Spuzzum northwards.