Spanish and British explorers are the first Europeans to glimpse the heavily forested peninsula that would become Stanley Park.
Brockton Point is cleared as the site for Captain Stamp’s sawmill though it was eventually built at the foot of today’s Dunlevy Street. Many of the park’s trails are old logging skid roads.
Portuguese, Scots, First Nations people and others make their home on the point long before there was a city. 'Portuguese' Joe Silvey was the first European to settle in the future park.
The Canadian Pacific Railway suggest in a letter to the Dominion Government that the lands east of a line between English Bay and Second Beach be given to the railroad “for docks, warehouses and buildings.” This request included Coal Harbour and the future Brockton Point.
The first order of business for the first meeting of the newly minted City of Vancouver council on May 12, 1886, was to pass a resolution to ask the Dominion Government to convey the peninsula known as the Government Reserve to the City “in order that it be used by the inhabitants of said City of Vancouver as a park.”
The Dominion Government agrees to lease the 400 hectare Government Reserve to the City of Vancouver for a nominal one dollar per year.
Deadman’s Island is chosen as a site to quarantine smallpox victims. A small rudimentary hospital known as the “Pest House” is built to house patients.
First Nations remains found in 1888 and in 1928 were taken away to Ottawa. In 2006 they were finally returned from museum storage for reburial by the Squamish Nation in Brackendale.
Mayor David Oppenheimer officially opens Stanley Park on September 27th.
A bridge is built across the narrow neck of Coal Harbour at the foot of Georgia Street. Gate posts and “Stanley Park” signs are erected at each park entrance. Signs at the Georgia Street entrance warn visitors to keep their carriage speed at a walking pace.