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Bounded by Burrard Inlet and the Port of Vancouver to the north, and by False Creek to the south, Carrall Street's proximity to water has played a key role in shaping its development.
The closest permanent settlement on Burrard Inlet, believed to be thousands of years old, was the Squamish village of Khwaykhway, at what is now the site of Lumberman's Arch in Stanley Park.
The arrival of European settlers and the opening of the sawmills in the 1860s began the dramatic transformation of this area's physical and social landscape.
In April 1867, Captain Edward Stamp established the British Columbia and Vancouver Island Spar Lumber and Sawmill Company (later Hastings Mills) at Kumkumlye-"Big Leaf Maple-the site of a seasonal aboriginal campsite.
Maple Tree Square, located at the north end of Carrall Street, is sometimes referred to as the birthplace of Vancouver. It was here on September 30, 1867 that John "Gassy Jack" Deighton arrived by canoe from New Westminster.
Deighton built his original Globe Saloon on a beach known by the local Squamish First Nations people as Luk'luk'i ("grove of beautiful trees"). The spot was a traditional summer food gathering and preserving camp for aboriginal Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam people.
If you dig below the brick cobbles of Maple Street Square, beyond the strata of ash from Vancouver's Great fire of June 13, 1886, down to the original beach layer, you would likely still find a strata of white clam shells, remnants of the aboriginal midden, that early Gastown settlers remembered as being scattered around the saloon site.
Within a few years of Deighton opening his saloon, the local working population--mostly hand loggers, mill workers, and entrepreneurs--had built a small village, which was dubbed Gassy's Town-Gastown for short-in Deighton's honour.
Gastown drew the attention of the government in Victoria, because it was located on crown land. The government tried unsuccessfully to get the community to move east to the Hastings townsite. Ultimately, the government relented and sent Joseph William Trutch, the chief commissioner of Lands and Works, to survey a new townsite. On March 1, 1870, Trutch's survey was registered and Gastown was renamed Granville, after the second Earl of Granville, then British Secretary of State for the Colonies.
Trutch's survey established Carrall Street as the eastern boundary of the townsite. The survey laid out the courses for Water Street, Cordova and Hastings running east and west, as well as two other north-south streets, Abbott and Cambie. Cambie Street formed the western boundary and Hastings the northern limit of the community.
The north edge of Maple Street Square was the location of the original shoreline at high tide during Deighton's time. Most of the pre-fire wooden buildings on the north side of Maple Tree Square were constructed over the tidal flats on wooden piles.
The southbound course of present day Carrall Street leads to False Creek. The tidal waters of False Creek originally came north to what is now Pender Street and in some places reached as far north as Hastings Street. Aboriginal people and the early European settlers used this route as a portage, dragging their dugout canoes and boats over the narrow isthmus at high tide.
Crowds at C.P.R. station viewing the arrival of the first train in Vancouver (May 23, 1887)
City of Vancouver Archives, LGN 460
Photographer: Harry T. Devine
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The Burrard Inlet shoreline changed with the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railroad and the development of the inlet as a seaport. The first CPR passenger train to reach Vancouver arrived on May 23, 1887. The first terminal building for the railroad, located west of the townsite at the north foot of Granville Street, was constructed on piles in deeper water connected to the mainland by a dock. Constructing the terminal out in the water facilitated transfer of freight from train to ships. As more tracks were added to the terminal area and more docks were built, the tidal area between the CPR tracks and the original shoreline was filled in.
The reclamation of the north shore of False Creek began with the establishment in 1886 of the Royal City Planing Mills at the south foot of Carrall. Although in operation for only a number of decades, the tons of sawdust and waste material produced by the mill began the process of reclamation. This process continued in a more systematic way through the early 1900s as land was reclaimed for a number of industrial plants all along the north shore of False Creek.
Eventually the CPR railyards expanded south of Yaletown to the west. The arrival of the Vancouver Westminster & Yukon Railway and the construction of its terminal building at the foot of Columbia, as well as the concurrent spread of Chinatown beyond the original Pender Street shoreline, all contributed to further change.
The north shore of False Creek was altered in the early 1980s in preparation for the Expo 86 world's fair. The industrial lands and railyards on the north shore of False Creek, from Seymour to Quebec Street, were cleared and transformed into a 70-hectare exposition site. The southernmost course of the Carrall Street Greenway travels just west of where the Japanese Pavilion and Land Plaza once stood and through the site of one of Expo's more popular rides, the Looping Starship, and the sites of the Saskatchewan, Mexico, and Australia pavilions.
In the 1990s, the old Expo site was redeveloped into a waterfront community, once again bringing new people and cultures to this historically diverse area.
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