As hard as it is to believe, the little settlement that would one day become Vancouver was once the smaller sibling of New Westminster; back in 1873, New Westminster's population was about 1500, while Gastown's population was just 75.
Even harder to believe - Vancouver's main bar, Gassy Jack's saloon, closed at 10:30pm. According to the Greater Vancouver Book, Gassy Jack wanted to ensure that the lumbermen and longshoremen would be up for work the next day.
Gastown had been renamed Granville in 1870 (after the British colonial secretary), in an effort to give the small milltown a little more respectability, however locals still referred to their little cluster of homes, shops and saloons as Gastown until 1886, when the City of Vancouver was offically incorporated.
As the story goes, just months after Vancouver was born, all 400 of the city's buildings (except for two) burned to the ground in less than an hour, due to a brush-clearing fire that got out of control. The city was of course rebuilt, with "warehouses, hotels and more permanent homes" serving the growing port community around it, according to 123vancouver.com.
As the city expanded westward, Gastown became a warehouse district in the 1920's, but if fell on hard times during the Great Depression, when many of its old hotels began to fill with the indigent. It was almost lost in the 1960's, when a proposed waterfront highway would have led to the neighborhood's destruction. Fortunately, local residents succeeded in saving Gastown, which was declared a historic site in 1971.
For more information about Gastown's past, check out the hisory section of www.gastown.org. There's also a pull-down menu on the site, with individual profiles of several historical buildings.
And in case you're looking for an excuse to go visit Old Vancouver, the Tour de Gastown is set to roll on July 20th. The Storyeum is also worth checking out, for a fuller recounting of British Columbia's history.
