Like most young colonies, British Columbia in 1858 was economically undeveloped. Nevertheless, the colony possessed a valuable natural resource in its public lands which might be sold to raise additional revenue, or given to immigrants in place of financial aid. Unfortunately, geography limited the immediate value of the Grown Lands and made settlement extraordinarily difficult. While attempting to define a successful land-settlement policy for British Columbia, the government could not ignore the instructions from Great Britain that the colony was to become self-supporting as soon as possible. Sales of land were therefore expected to be an important source of revenue. Unfortunately, the unstable mining population cared little for farming. The indifference of the miners and the inability of the government to confine the mining population within the limits of surveyed land brought about a gradual reduction in the price of land. Although it was originally intended that the Wakefield system should be applied to British Columbia, the proximity of the United States made the adoption of the pre-emption system inevitable. While intended as a temporary measure the pre-emption system was adopted in 1860 and remained on the statute books throughout the colonial period. The question of free grants of land was widely discussed in British Columbia during the colonial period after the passage of the Homestead Act of 1862 in the United States. However, the lack of surveyed land resulting from the financial and geographical problems of the colony made its adoption impossible. The pre-emption system was therefore the main feature of the colony’s land-settlement policy from 1858 until Confederation. New Westminster was the only district on the mainland in which country land was sold at auction. In that district, by 1868, of the 83,440 acres of surveyed land offered for sale, 27,797 acres had been bought. Of this amount not more than 250 acres had been brought under cultivation. By 1868 a total of 1696 pre-emption claims had been recorded of which 6000 acres had been brought under cultivation. Throughout the colonial period agriculture remained secondary to mining and it is probable that the discoveries of gold had much more influence upon farming than the actual land-settlement policy of the government. The best justification for the pre-emption system is the fact that it allowed settlers in the vicinity of the mines and beyond the limits of surveyed land to produce for the local market. Although the absence of a free-grant system was blamed by some for the slow growth of settlement, they failed to discern that settlers who pre-empted in many parts of the colony enjoyed the benefits of a free grant. For, since the government was financially unable to survey their land, no payment was required. Yet to make agriculture a parmanent and substantial industry, some confidence in the prosperity of the colony, such as that promised by Confederation with its guarantee of railway connections, was needed to support the pre-emption system. Farmers in the upper country were the chief support of the colony in the depression of 1867. On the other hand the lower Fraser Valley was still dependent upon imported food; for in that district uncertainty as to the future of the colony had hindered the investment of capital which was needed to clear and drain the land, In addition to a pre-emption claim the settler in British Columbia, after 1865, was entitled to a pastoral lease. Although no uniform policy was adopted in granting these leases, the average lease ran for a period of five years at the rate of 4¢ an acre. The fine quality of the bunch grass in the interior of the colony coupled with the government regulations concerning its use resulted in a decrease in the list of imported meat. That the colony had to import meat at all can be blamed not upon the system of pastoral leases adopted by the Government but rather upon the ever-present difficulties of transportation. It was impossible to drive cattle down the Cariboo Road to the lower mainland markets because of the dangerous route and scarcity of food. During the colonial period the revenue gained from the sale of surveyed land and town lots was insignificant compared with that received from custom duties and road tolls. In the year 1870, it contributed only a little more than one-fortieth of the total revenue of the colony. After 1871 Confederation and the promise of a railway diverted the colonial government's point of view from the land policy of the United States to that of the Canadian Government. In 1873 British Columbia adopted the rectangular system of surveying as used by the Dominion Government in Manitoba. In the following year it adopted a system of free grants similar to that contained in the Dominion Lands Act of 1872. Although nothing could have been more liberal- than the free-grant system provided for by the Land Act of 1874, its influence upon the settlement of the province in the period under consideration was negligible. In other words the charge often made during the colonial period that the absence of a free grant system hindered the settlement of the colony was erroneous. The rapid settlement of the province in those early years was beyond the unaided power of any land-settlement policy. The transcontinental railway was badly needed to overcome the isolation of the Pacific province. / Arts, Faculty of / History, Department of / Graduate

This thesis describes the change in the pattern of service centres in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia at various periods during a century of European occupance. The study of settlement evolution in this region involves an examination of hierarchical change as indicated by variations in postal revenue. The attempt to focus both in time and space is one of the inherent difficulties in any dynamic study of the urban hierarchy, for it presents a basic problem in establishing an adequate and readily available index of centrality. Tertiary revenue would provide the best index, but it is neither available for the smaller centres nor through time. These disadvantages are not apparent in postal revenue which closely correlates with tertiary revenue. It is inferred that postal revenue reflects the tertiary activity of the great majority of service centres in British Columbia. Since the end of the nineteenth century the North American post office, with its low condition of entry, has been an essential part of all except some of the lowest order centres. Postal revenue data is available,throughout Canada, from Confederation onwards, but it presents some problems of utilization as dollar values change through time. The suggested method of expressing the revenue for each given year as a percentage of that for an areal unit is illustrated by its application to the Lower Mainland. However, while the Lower Mainland can be thought of as a physical entity, it must be considered as being part of a larger functional region which changes both functionally and areally. The province has been taken as the continuing functional unit. The idea would seem to be supported by the graphic analysis. The whole period, from 1858 to 1961, has been broken down into five eras, in each of which a common means of transport has predominated. The first era up to 1880 covers the years of initial exploitation and settlement of the region by Europeans, a period when water transport predominated. The second era (1881-1900) is a period of transition from water to rail: the first trans-continental railway merely duplicated the existing water facilities, but its construction encouraged a rapid expansion of settlement even before it actually opened. The turn of the century heralded a decade of feverish rail-way construction, culminating with the opening of the second trans-continental railway in 1915. The railway era ends with the close of hostilities in 1918, and the following era embraces the inter-war years, a period of transition from rail to road. The final era commences in 1940 for, although the steam railway and electric interurban assumed a new lease of life during the war, it was merely a temporary resurgence and road transport was soon predominant. The wartime incentive spurred a tremendous growth of the regional economy, a growth which has continued, somewhat sporadically, up to the present. Throughout the century, settlement change reflects the changes in the economy and transport facilities in the Lower Mainland. The economy of the region has passed from primary exploitation to that of a metropolitan complex with a growing secondary component. The Vancouver area has formed a distinct economic unit within the regions since the arrival of the railway in 1886. The growing functional concentration on the city led to the attainment of metropolitan status by the end of the first decade of the twentieth century. This attainment was expressed in the physical as well as the functional growth of the city: by 1910 it possessed over 30% of the provincial population and greater than 40% of the tertiary activity, more than double the proportions of a decade earlier. The interaction between the metropolis and the smaller centres, with the metropolis playing the dominant role, has given rise to the present urban hierarchy. The settlement pattern has varied from discrete and independent settlements, during the phase of primary exploitation, to a metropolitan-dominated complex. The discrete pattern changed to an increasingly depends hierarchy following the growth of Vancouver and New Westminster as market and distribution centres. The growth of these centres linked them into a common metropolitan area, while the external expansion of this area has resulted in the functional and physical domination of most of the region by the metropolis: a trend that has resulted in the supplanting of the central place hierarchy by an inter-urban complex. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate

Mining frontiers have rarely attracted the attention of geographers because of the transitory nature of settlement in such areas. However, a more stable pattern of settlement emerges if the area of study is broadened to include the supply centres for the mines and the transportation routes along which the supplies were carried. The permanent impact of mining on settlement occurred in these service centres and along the main transportation routes leading to the mines. This study examines the nature of the permanent impact on British Columbia of the gold rushes which occurred between I858 and 1866. These rushes established a new pattern of settlement which remained until the coming of the railway in 1885, and, later, they acted as guidelines in the development of settlement. The British Columbia frontier was part of a larger frontier which was opened in California in 1848 and spread northward and eastward in the ensuing twenty years. San Francisco early secured a dominant position as the manufacturing centre for this frontier area, and it retained this position throughout the period of the British Columbia gold rushes. As a result, British Columbia remained within San Francisco's hinterland from 1858 to 1885 and most of the gold mined was shipped to the San Francisco Mint to pay for manufactured goods. The main flow of gold arrived when the United States Government was in very great need of gold to hack its borrowing for the conduct of the Civil War. The determination of the Colonial Government of British Columbia to secure political autonomy in spite of economic dependence on the United States led to the construction of costly wagon roads from east to west across the mountain barrier of the Coast ranges. These roads funneled trade from the interior of the Province through the Lower Fraser Valley to New Westminster and Victoria and thus avoided the traditional Columbia fur trade supply routes which lay in United States Territory. The wagon roads inaugurated a new era of transportation, and determined the locations of all important subsequent transportation routes in the southwestern part of Mainland British Columbia. Land was a strong interest among those who arrived in the gold rushes, and, at times, this land interest rivalled their interest in gold. The group of settlements subsequently established in the Lower Fraser Valley formed the nuclei of many present day communities, and the system of land survey which guided some of these early settlements shaped subsequent patterns of transportation. In the Province as a whole the patterns of settlement established between 1858 and 1866 remained substantially the same until the coming of the railway in I885. With the coming of the railway the Province entered a new phase of economic development, but the broad lines of settlement which the gold rushes created remained dominant and today they are still evident in the spatial organization of economic activities. Gold initiated a pattern which was confirmed by the subsequent construction of the trans-continental railway, the growth of the forest industries, and the development of agriculture. / Arts, Faculty of / Geography, Department of / Graduate