Ashcroft was founded in the 1860s, during the Cariboo Gold Rush, by two English brothers named Clement Francis Cornwall and Henry Pennant Cornwall, founders of Ashcroft Ranch, who emigrated to Canada from Ashcroft, at Newington Bagpath in Gloucestershire.
There they founded the small town of Ashcroft (see Ashcroft, British Columbia), built for travellers in search of gold, giving them a place to stay and saddle their horses.