This is a list of landmarks and historic locations, mostly related to coal mining, in the vicinity of the City of Nanaimo in the Canadian province of

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, ...

Origins of Nanaimo - Coal

Most of these landmarks relate to the city's history as a

coal-mining Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from ...

town.

Coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when ...

was discovered in the area in 1849. Joseph William McKay took possession of the deposits for the

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC; french: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson) is a Canadian retail business group. A fur trading business for much of its existence, HBC now owns and operates retail stores in Canada. The company's namesake business di ...

(HBC) in 1852 at the direction of Governor James Douglas. The area was first known as Wintuhuysen Inlet and then Colvile Town (named for HBC Governor

Andrew Colvile Andrew Colvile (born Andrew Wedderburn; 6 November 1779 – 3 February 1856) was a Scottish businessman, notable as the Hudson's Bay Company#Governors, governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, a huge organisation set up for the North American ...

) but became known as Nanaimo in 1860. The first church opened in 1861. In 1853 the population was 125. By 1869 it was about 650 and by 1874 it was close to 1,000. By 1859, 25,000 tons of coal had been shipped from Nanaimo, mostly to

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

. In 1862 the HBC sold its coal interests to an English Company known as the Vancouver Coal Mining and Land Company (VCML). Output was 100 tons a day by 1863 and double that by 1866. By 1874, annual production was 80,000 tons and it was 10 times that by 1884. The mines in

Wellington Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by metr ...

were owned by

Robert Dunsmuir Robert Dunsmuir (August 31, 1825April 12, 1889) was a Scottish-Canadian coal mine developer, owner and operator, railway developer, industrialist and politician in British Columbia. He was recognized as a National Historic Person by the governm ...

. Initially his company was Dunsmuir, Diggle and Co., but after he bought out his partners he carried on as R. Dunsmuir and Sons. The family company was sold by son

James Dunsmuir James Dunsmuir (July 8, 1851 – June 6, 1920) was a Canadian industrialist and politician in British Columbia. He served as the 14th premier of British Columbia from 1900 to 1902 and the eighth lieutenant governor of British Columbia from 19 ...

in 1910 to Canadian Collieries (Dunsmuir) Ltd. (CCD). The VCML mines were mainly under Nanaimo and the harbour. The East Wellington colliery was owned by R.D. Chandler of San Francisco. Peak production of the Nanaimo coal fields was 1,400,000 tons in 1922. Production declined steadily after that. The last mine in Nanaimo closed in 1968. In the early 1980s the Wolf mountain coal mine opened up and produced coal from the Wellington seam until 1987. Locations shown are generally for the main shaft entrance although some mines, Extension No. 8 for example, had numerous slope shaft entrances as well.

Landmarks of Nanaimo

References

External links

Nanaimo Coal Mines, Vancouver Island University
*{{Portal-inline, Canada Nanaimo History of Vancouver Island Mines in British Columbia Nanaimo Mid Vancouver Island

Origins of Nanaimo - Coal

Landmarks of Nanaimo

See also

References

External links