Comox Valley - History

History

According to the Courtenay Museum and Paleontology Centre, Sir Francis Drake visited this area in 1579. This assertion is based on research by Canadian Samuel Bawlf, who in The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake, 1577-1580 suggests that Drake's reference to landing in what he called New Albion (the name of the region of North America explored by Drake) was, in fact, what is now known as Comox. This conclusion is not shared, however, by other historians such as Jules Verne and Samuel Johnson. What does not appear to be contested is the assertion made in the online version of the Canadian Encyclopedia that first contact in Comox between the original First Nations inhabitants and the first European visitors occurred in 1792 when Her Majesty's Ship (HMS) Discovery anchored in the Comox Harbour.

The first European colonists arrived in the spring of 1861 intending to start farms. At that time, Governor James Douglas was encouraging settlers arriving in the Colony of Vancouver Island to establish themselves in the Cowichan Valley and the Comox Valley rather than the gold fields of the mainland as these were the two areas that had agricultural potential on the island. The first settlers were Nanaimo coal miners and Hudson's Bay Company employees, John and William Biggs, Thomas Dignan, Edwin Gough, Adam Grant Horne, Thomas Jones, Alexander McFarlane, George Mitchell, Thomas Williams and Charles York all of whom had arrived on Vancouver Island before the 1858 gold rush. Of these, only Mitchell remained by 1862 when the Grappler arrived with the Comox Expedition. Dignan went to Gabriola Island. Horne and most of the others went to Nanaimo. A small pox epidemic in 1862 decimated the native population. There were three groups of indigenous people, the Comox, the Pentlach (who were then nearly extinct), and the Lekwiltok, in the valley when the European settlers arrived. In 1862, Surveyor General Pemberton secured funding from the colonial government in Victoria to construct the first road into the Comox area from Nanaimo. When it became clear that a 15-foot (4.6 m) wide wagon road would be too expensive, a bridle path with some bridges was built instead. Flooding and tree falls made maintenance of this road impossible. Until the mid 1890s, access to the area was by sea. In 1874 the 1,015-foot (309 m) governnment wharf and the first bridge over the Courtenay River were constructed.