VANCOUVER

city, seat (1854) of Clark county, southwestern Washington, U.S. It lies at the head of deepwater navigation on the Columbia River, there bridged to Portland, Ore. The oldest continuously inhabited white settlement in the state, it was founded in 1824 as a Hudson's Bay Company post, Fort Vancouver (named for Captain George Vancouver), and served as headquarters of the company's Pacific Northwest operations. The first steamboat (SS Beaver) to operate on the Pacific north of San Francisco (1836) was assembled there after arriving under sail from England with paddle wheels as deck cargo. Fort Vancouver, which is now a national historic site, became a U.S. military reservation (Vancouver Barracks) in 1848. Manufacturing, farming, lumbering, and port operations (including the shipping of grain, lumber, paper, cable, and canned foods) provide a diversified economic base. The city is a distribution centre for hydroelectric power produced in the Columbia Basin. It is the site of Clark College (1933) and state schools for the deaf and the blind. Gifford Pinchot National Forest is headquartered in Vancouver. Inc. 1857. Pop. (1992 est.) city, 49,575; (1990) Vancouver PMSA, 238,053. city, southwestern British Columbia, Canada. It lies between Burrard Inlet (an arm of the Strait of Georgia) to the north and the Fraser River delta to the south, and is opposite Vancouver Island. The city is just north of the U.S. (Washington) boundary. It has a fine natural harbour on a superb site facing the sea and mountains. Originating as a sawmilling settlement called Granville in the 1870s, it was incorporated as a city in 1886 (after it became the terminus of the first trans-Canada railroad, the Canadian Pacific) and was renamed to honour Captain George Vancouver, of the Royal Navy, who had navigated the coast in 1792. It recovered from a disastrous fire (1886) to become a prosperous port, aided, in part, by the opening of the Panama Canal (1915), which made it economically feasible to export grain and lumber from Vancouver to the American east coast and Europe. By the 1930s Vancouver had become Canada's third largest city (including its metropolitan-area population) and its major Pacific coast port. The city is now the industrial, commercial, and financial heart of British Columbia, with trade and transportation as its basic functions. Its ice-free deepwater port, with extensive docks and grain-elevator facilities, handles freighters, a fishing fleet, and ferries (to Vancouver Island) and is connected to mainland Canada and the United States by four major railroads. An international airport serves the city, as do roads to the eastern provinces (Trans-Canada Highway) and Seattle, Wash., which is located 125 miles (200 km) to the south. Wood processing, based on the extensive forest resources of the hinterland, is one of Vancouver's major industries. Power for sawmilling and plywood and paper manufacturing is provided by hydroelectric developments to the north and by oil and natural-gas pipelines from Alberta. Other significant economic activities include food processing, fishing, shipbuilding, metal fabricating, and printing and publishing. Vancouver's atmosphere is somewhat British with Oriental overtones and includes a Chinatown overshadowed on the Pacific coast only by San Francisco. Gastown is a restoration (1880s) of the original heart of the city. The business and financial district adjoins the port facilities along Burrard Inlet and False Creek. Large, attractively landscaped residential suburbs included in the metropolitan area extend to the south and east along the mouth of the Fraser River and encompass the cities of New Westminster, Port Moody, and Port Coquitlam. To the north, across Burrard Inlet, are the residential suburbs of North Vancouver and West Vancouver, which are backed by steep mountains up to 5,000 feet (1,500 m) high and are connected to Vancouver by the Lions Gate and Second Narrows bridges. Educational and cultural institutions within the metropolitan area include the University of British Columbia (1908; with a notable Museum of Anthropology on its campus), Simon Fraser University (1963), H.R. MacMillan Planetarium, the Centennial and Maritime museums, the Vancouver Art Gallery (1931), and BC Stadium (1983) for sporting events. Stanley Park (with its arboretum, gardens, aquarium, and zoo) occupies 1,000 acres (405 hectares) of the downtown peninsula at the harbour entrance. Pop. (1991) city, 471,844; metropolitan area, 1,602,502.