The Fraser Delta—Burrard Inlet area that is now Vancouver was occupied by Coast Salish people of the Musqueam, Kwantlen, Tsawwassen, and Capilano bands when the Spanish explorer José Maria Narvaez and the British naval officer George Vancouver visited the area in the early 1790s.
The first permanent white settlement, established around the Hastings sawmill in the 1860s, was colloquially known as Gastown (after a talkative leading citizen, “Gassy” Jack Deighton). This settlement was renamed Granville in 1870. After the arrival of the transcontinental Canadian Pacific Railroad, in 1886, the settlement was incorporated and renamed after George Vancouver. The community grew as a wood-processing center, a railroad terminus, and a port. Vancouver surpassed Victoria (which nevertheless remained the provincial capital) in population and commercial and financial importance at the turn of the 20th century.
Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2001
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