Quote:
Originally Posted by Architype
Interesting, there was only Granville and Hastings, and what we commonly think of as the oldest neighborhoods, Strathcona, Mt. Pleasant, and West End weren't even there yet, but expansion was rapid soon after this. I don't think the Hastings area has any historic buildings today either, so maybe it wasn't even developed.
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Only Granville and Hastings had names, but they weren't the only developed parts of the Inlet. New Westminster was a modest town with a military foundation in 1858 as the capital of the Colony of British Columbia.
There was an earlier settlement when Fort Langley was initially established in 1827 in present-day Derby as a Hudson's Bay Company trading post. That site flooded, so the fort was later relocated to present-day location in 1839. The new fort was rebuilt in the following year, after a fire, and continued to be operated by the Hudson's Bay Company until 1886.
Hastings Mill (which was located between Granville and Hastings) had been developed in 1865, and you can see what it looked like by the end of the 1860s
here. Initially its owner, Edward Stamp, had started building the mill closer to the First Narrows (close to where the Lion's Gate Bridge is now located), but the tides kept pulling ships from their moorings, so he moved it east, further into the Inlet.
Hastings Townsite was selected by the same British Royal Engineer who established New Westminster, Col. Moody, around 1863. It was at the end of an existing first nations trail that cut through the forest to reach Burrard Inlet. Oliver Hocking was Deputy Collector of Customs at Burrard Inlet from 1866 to 1869, leased the land, and erected buildings that included a post office and a hotel. Hocking called his development 'New Brighton', but when he sold the hotel to Maxie Michaud (who claimed to have walked there from Montreal) in 1869, Michaud renamed it the Hastings Hotel.
There was sometimes a ferry across to the other (earlier) mill and small settlement on the north shore, Moody's Mill, built in 1862, and bought out of bankrupcy by an American, Sewell Moody, in 1865. (He wasn't a relation to the British military officer).
Granville was developed, initially with a bar built on a clearing in a grove of maple trees by a New Westminster publican and sometimes Fraser River steamboat pilot, Jack Deighton, in 1867. He selected the location because it was just outside the mill lot boundary. He squatted initially, but was later allowed to build a new bar and hotel after the street grid had been surveyed - his first building was located (by the surveyor) in the middle of an intersection, so he couldn't continue to squat there.
Granville was renamed Vancouver when it was chosen as the terminus for the railway, but was almost totally destroyed by fire in 1886, and was rebuilt along with new suburbs including Strathcona, Mt. Pleasant, and the West End, in a very short time. The Hastings Hotel didn't burn down, but it was also rebuilt in 1886 so there are no earlier structures than 1886.