An elemental natural landscape of mountains, forest, rivers, lakes and ocean is the key defining factor in the history and ongoing cultural story of the Alberni Valley.
Port Alberni wouldn't have existed if not for the Alberni Inlet, a narrow saltwater channel leading to a deep-water port nicely isolated from the tempestuous weather patterns on Vancouver Island's west coast. Seemingly unlimited natural resources – trees and bountiful salmon stocks primarily – put the town on the map as European settlers arrived in the mid-19th century.
First Nations Roots
The Alberni Valley and the mid-west coast of Vancouver Island are the traditional ancestral lands of the Nuu-chah-nulth (translation: "all along the mountains and sea"). Two among the nation's 14 bands reside in the Alberni Valley: the Tseshaht First Nation (whose people were based in the Barkley Sound/Alberni Inlet area) and the Hupacasath First Nation of the Alberni Valley.
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Early Explorers & Settlement
The Spanish established a fort at Friendly Cove (Yuquot) on the rugged west coast of Vancouver Island in 1789 and began trading with the Nootka (then known as the Nuu-chah-nulth). Don Pedro de Alberni was in command of the garrison a year later when his colleague, Francisco de Eliza, spotted what he called the "Canale de Alberni" (today's Alberni Inlet). The name persisted and eventually appeared on maps produced by surveyors aboard the HMS Hecate after they explored the inlet in 1861. That summer a sawmill was established on the Somass River, the first such mill in BC built for the export lumber trade.
Two Towns
Settlers began arriving in numbers in the 1880s as the forestry business boomed and Port Alberni became a business hub for the remote lumber and fishing camps in the region. The town was incorporated in 1912 following the arrival of the Esquimalt & Nanaimo railway from Parksville. Alberni, a rural sister community to the north, was established a year later. (The twin cities were amalgamated on Oct. 28, 1967.)
MacMillan Bloedel and such international players as New York's Rockefeller family drove the growth of the forest industry as local sawmills churned out lumber. Established in 1926, the McLean Mill (a 20-minute drive northwest of town) offers rich insights into a now-vanished era.
Tsunami
Port Alberni made international headlines in 1964 when an Alaskan earthquake generated a tsunami that raced up the inlet and slapped the town twice with massive waves. A superb exhibit at the Maritime Discovery Centre documents a nightmarish, midnight-hour act of nature that destroyed dozens of homes but fortunately took no lives.
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