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 West Point Grey |
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Known as the ancient village of Eeyullmough, the local Musqueam tribes lived here. The village site had also drawn the earliest immigrants, particularly European navigators and explorers. In fact, Jose Narvaez, a Spanish explorer named the place Langara Point when he rediscovered it in 1791.
The following year, Captains Valdez and Galiano came across Captain Vancouver off the same shore. The meeting of the two nationals brought about the naming of two areas into Spanish Banks and English Bay.
However, it was Jeremiah Rogers who changed the biodiversity of the area when he set up the first logging site and started cutting down giant trees for shipping materials. Then, in the 1870s a whaling station was put up there to essentially prepare the area for future settlement.
Thirty years later, in the late 1897, the area had became evidently potential for official settlement but only 54 owners had set up permanent homes until government reserves set up a post at the Point and along Jericho. Jericho was site of Jericho Park, the former School for the Deaf Blind and the Jericho army base. It is now the site of UBC.
Aware of its strategic location, the government established an air station site in the area in the 1920s where flying boats could map the coastline, chase rumrunners and track on illegal immigrants. The site was also utilized to perform anti-submarine reconnaissance base during the war.
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In 1908, Point Grey broke away from the Municipality of South Vancouver and established itself as a municipal town paving the way to electing its own Council officials. The incorporation of Point Grey had quickly improved access to social services in the area such as water service reaching West Point Grey. The scenic Northwest Marine Drive was also developed along with the opening of the Jericho Golf and County Club.
A year later, in 1909, a single-room schoolhouse for the area s 24 children was constructed. To this day, the historic school house, made of seasoned woods and lumbers, still stood there overlooking Spanish Banks though dwarfed by the modern Queen Mary School.
Although massive infrastructure such as roads, sewerage and parks, had been infused into the area, the town s development still remained slow. Council officials had to invest more in order to spur economic activity in the area. The problem had been addressed with the imposition of tax on all unimproved lands.
The bait may have prompted landowners to develop their real properties instead of paying taxes on idle assets. At the end of 1924, shops and commercial buildings lined on 10 th Avenue between Tolmie and Trimble Streets.
The commercialization of the area was actually abbreviated with the construction of the Royal Canadian Air Force at Jericho Beach on the Pacific Coast Station in 1921. The Jericho lands were developed into a recreational park when the federal government decided to decommission the Royal Canadian Air Force in the area in the 70s.
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