Hastings Mill

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Hastings Mill was a saw-mill on the south shore of Burrard Inlet and was the first commercial operation around which the settlement that would become Vancouver developed.

In June, 1867, Captain Edward Stamp began Stamps Mill at the foot of what is now Dunlevy Street. Stamp lost ownership of the mill after a falling out with his English investors, after which the name changed. The early settlement was in effect a company town; people shopped at the Hasting's Mill Store and sent their children to the Hastings Mill School. This would change after the CPR chose Vancouver as the terminus for the transcontinental railway. Nevertheless, the lumber industry remained the backbone of the new settlement's economy, and Hastings Mill was the "the nucleus around which the city of Vancouver grew up in the 1880s," and remained important to the local economy until it closed in the 1920s.^[1] The building that housed the Hastings Mill Store was transported by barge to the foot of Alma Street at that time to begin its new life as the Old Hastings Mill Store Museum. This was also the only structure to survive the great fire in 1886 and was used as a hospital and morgue for the fire's victims.^[2]

[edit] References

1. ^ Chuck Davis, "A Brief History of Greater Vancouver," from The History of Metropolitan Vancouver website.
2. ^ "The Old Hastings Mill Store Museum," Walking tours of Vancouver with John Atkin website.