Broom Hill is a hill and eponymous rural neighbourhood in

Sooke Sooke () is a district municipality on the southern tip of Vancouver Island, Canada, by road from Victoria, the capital of British Columbia. Sooke, the westernmost of Greater Victoria's Western Communities, is to the north and west of t ...

British Columbia British Columbia is the westernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Situated in the Pacific Northwest between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains, the province has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that ...

. Its residential subdivisions surround Broom Hill proper, which is composed of

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

which rises to an elevation of 283 metres (928 feet). Above the subdivisions, most of the terrain has a forest cover dominated by

Douglas-fir The Douglas fir (''Pseudotsuga menziesii'') is an evergreen conifer species in the pine family, Pinaceae. It is the tallest tree in the Pinaceae family. It is native to western North America and is also known as Douglas-fir, Douglas spruce, Or ...

Trails

At the top of Broom Hill is a swing looking out over Sooke Harbour and the Juan de Fuca Strait. There are three access points to the trail Blanchard Rd, Mountain Heights Dr and Denfield Rd
Map
Hikers and bikers regularly travel the trails, but they are not marked, and cell phone service is weak.

Where Broom Hill Got Its Name

In the 1850's Captain Walter Colquhoun Grant was scouting for new lumber markets in Hawaii when the wife of a Scottish consul gifted him with a packet of Scotch Broom seeds. Grant brought the seeds to his Sooke homestead and planted them in the fertile ground at the bottom of what is now known as Broom Hill. Now considered an invasive, Scotch Broom can be found growing all along the pacific coastline from Alaska to California.

References

Populated places in the Capital Regional District Hills of British Columbia {{BritishColumbiaCoast-geo-stub