Otter Point is a rural forestry district between other rural district of Shirley and town of Sooke. It references the immediate area around Otter Point Road, a crescent-shaped thoroughfare beginning and terminating on West Coast Road as well as the area towards Shirley boundary too. The rural district itself is generally considered to begin past the extensive residential subdivisions of Broom Hill, past Helgesen Road. The character of Otter Point is predominantly rural lifestyle, with many small

hobby farm A hobby farm (also called a lifestyle block in New Zealand, or acreage living or rural residential in Australia) is a smallholding or small farm that is maintained without expectation of being a primary source of income. Some are held merely to ...

s and pockets of forest. The housing ranges from small, modest cottage-type structures and mobile homes to more extensive, upscale residences. Most of the lots are large, consisting of or more.

Geography

The landscape is rocky with

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90 ...

gabbro Gabbro () is a phaneritic (coarse-grained), mafic intrusive igneous rock formed from the slow cooling of magnesium-rich and iron-rich magma into a holocrystalline mass deep beneath the Earth's surface. Slow-cooling, coarse-grained gabbro is ch ...

and

sandstone Sandstone is a clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate grains. Sandstones comprise about 20–25% of all sedimentary rocks. Most sandstone is composed of quartz or feldspar (both silicates ...

. Much of it is forested by

arbutus ''Arbutus'' is a genus of 12 accepted speciesAct. Bot. Mex no.99 Pátzcuaro abr. 2012.''Arbutus bicolor''/ref> of flowering plants in the family Ericaceae, native to warm temperate regions of the Mediterranean, western Europe, the Canary Islan ...

(at its western limit),

bigleaf maple ''Acer macrophyllum'', the bigleaf maple or Oregon maple, is a large deciduous tree in the genus '' Acer''. It is native to western North America, mostly near the Pacific coast, from southernmost Alaska to southern California. Some stands are al ...

alder Alders are trees comprising the genus ''Alnus'' in the birch family Betulaceae. The genus comprises about 35 species of monoecious trees and shrubs, a few reaching a large size, distributed throughout the north temperate zone with a few sp ...

, and conifers such as

shore pine ''Pinus contorta'', with the common names lodgepole pine and shore pine, and also known as twisted pine, and contorta pine, is a common tree in western North America. It is common near the ocean shore and in dry montane forests to the subalpine ...

western red cedar ''Thuja plicata'' is an evergreen coniferous tree in the cypress family Cupressaceae, native to western North America. Its common name is western redcedar (western red cedar in the UK), and it is also called Pacific redcedar, giant arborvitae ...

western hemlock ''Tsuga heterophylla'', the western hemlock or western hemlock-spruce, is a species of hemlock native to the west coast of North America, with its northwestern limit on the Kenai Peninsula, Alaska, and its southeastern limit in northern Sonoma ...

and

Douglas-fir The Douglas fir (''Pseudotsuga menziesii'') is an evergreen conifer species in the pine family, Pinaceae. It is native to western North America and is also known as Douglas-fir, Douglas spruce, Oregon pine, and Columbian pine. There are three va ...

. There are many ponds, as well as two substantial lakes — Kemp Lake and Young Lake (the latter being the site of a Scout camp). There are numerous unofficial trails that locals use for walking or riding horses. To the north and east of the neighbourhood is working forest land, much of it licensed for harvesting to Western Forest Products

The areas around the

logging road A gravel road is a type of unpaved road surfaced with gravel that has been brought to the site from a quarry or stream bed. They are common in less-developed nations, and also in the rural areas of developed nations such as Canada and the Unit ...

s there are popular with outdoor recreationalists.

Services

No commercial facilities exist in the district; however, there is some light industry, typically operated from area residences. There are some very limited public facilities such a
Otter Point Fire Hall
on the corner of Otter Point and Kemp Lake Roads and public parks such a

External links

Hybrid image of the Otter Point Road area from ''Google Images''
- The yellow, crescent-shaped road to the north of Hwy. 14 is Otter Point Rd. Kemp Lake can be seen to the south of Otter Point Road, Young Lake and McKenzie Lake to the northeast. {{coord, 48.3838, -123.7962, type:landmark_source:enwiki-googlemaplink, display=title Populated places in the Capital Regional District