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Nicholson Road is part of an ongoing photo project aimed at sharing and celebrating the different communities in Metro Vancouver. Each week Vancouver Is Awesome will be featuring one of the latest, most engaging photos from the project in order to draw your attention a little bit outside of the hyper-focus that we usually have on the city of Vancouver. |
Welcome to Maple Ridge. The photo for this week was taken from the north end of the Golden Ears Bridge, a toll bridge built in 2009 to replace the aging, and popular Albion Ferry service across the Fraser between Maple Ridge/Pitt Meadows, and Langley/Surrey.
The mill near the top left is part of the Hammond settlement, which was given as a Crown Grant to the Hammond brothers (19 and 26, a farmer and a civil engineer from England) in 1862. The area was later named Port Hammond when it became the temporary terminus for the CPR during its westward expansion - Being the terminus to a national railway meant shipping activity, and Port Hammond saw quite a bit of traffic between New Westminster and Victoria during this time.
Built in 1910, the local mill, which cycled through a number of names like the Bailey Lumber Company and Hammond Cedar Mill, was at one time the largest Red Cedar mill in the world. And like many local communities around the turn of the 20th century, many of the local businesses burned to the ground during a fire in 1916.. but hey, fire shmire. People were tough back then and they rebuilt, and today Hammond proudly remembers its past with a number of heritage houses and other protected structures.
More from Nicholson Road can be found HERE.
