VANCOUVER - British Columbia: Including the Alaska Highway - page 37

arrange your sightseeing schedule around the weather. If the forecast calls for a rainy day,
concentrate on the museums, leaving the North Shore and Stanley Park for a sunny day.
HISTORY
The first Europeans to set eyes on the land encompassing today's city of Vancouver were
gold-seeking Spanish traders who sailed through the Strait of Georgia in 1790. Although
the forested wilderness they encountered seemed impenetrable, it had been inhabited by hu-
mans since becoming ice-free some 10,000 years earlier.
Not to be outdone, the Brits sent Captain George Vancouver to the area in 1792. Van-
couver cruised through the Strait of Georgia in search of a northwest passage to the Ori-
ent, charting Burrard Inlet and claiming the land for Great Britain in the process. As stories
of an abundance of fur-bearing mammals filtered east, the fur companies went into action.
The North West Company sent fur trader and explorer Simon Fraser overland to establish
a coastal trading post. In 1808, he reached the Pacific Ocean via the river that was later
named for him, and he built a fur fort on the riverbank east of today's Vancouver. In 1827,
the Hudson's Bay Company established its own fur fort on the Fraser River, 48 kilometers
east of present-day Vancouver. Neither of these two outposts spawned a permanent settle-
ment.
Vancouver Is Born
It wasn't until the discovery of gold up the Fraser River in the late 1850s that settlement
really took hold in the area. The town of New Westminster, just southeast of present-day
Vancouver, was declared British Columbia's first capital in 1866.
The settlement of Vancouver began with the establishment of a brickworks (“Bricks?
Why on earth make bricks when we've got all these trees?” said the Woodcutters' Union
spokesman) on the south side of Burrard Inlet. Sawmills and related logging and lumber
industries followed, and soon several boomtowns were carved out of the wilderness. The
first was Granville (now downtown Vancouver), which the original settlers called Gastown
after one of its earliest residents, notorious saloon owner “Gassy Jack” Deighton. In 1886
Granville, population 1,000, became the City of Vancouver. Not long thereafter, fire roared
through the timber city. Just about everything burned to the ground, but with true pioneer-
ing spirit, Vancouver was rebuilt at lightning speed.
A Growing City
In 1887, the struggling city got a boost with the arrival of the first transcontinental railroad.
Selected as the western terminus for the Canadian Pacific Railway, Vancouver suddenly be-