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Fort Langley is a village community with a population of 3,400 and forms part of the Township of Langley. It is the home of Fort Langley National Historic Site, a former fur trade post of the Hudson's Bay Company. Lying on the Fraser River, Fort Langley is at the northern edge of the Township of Langley. ==History== Fort Langley dates from a time when the boundary between British and American possession of the transmontane west had not yet been decided. Sir George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, realized that Fort Vancouver built near present day Portland, Oregon might be lost to the Americans if the border did not follow the Columbia River. Fearing the 49th parallel north would become the demarcation line, Simpson ordered the Hudson's Bay Company to construct the original Fort Langley in 1827 at a location 4 km downstream from its present site. Fort Langley was intentionally constructed on the south bank of the Fraser River in the event that, if Fort Vancouver was lost to the Americans, that Fort Langley could secure British claims to both sides of the Fraser. By 1830, Fort Langley had become a major export port for salted salmon in cedar barrels, as well as cedar lumber and shingles to the Hawaiian Islands. In the days before the Colony of Vancouver Island and the Colony of British Columbia united, Governor Sir James Douglas chose Fort Langley to be the provisional colonial capital.〔Barman, Jean. ''The West Beyond the West'', 72〕 By 1858, a town by the name of Derby, adjacent to the original location of the Fort, had been surveyed and subdivided into town lots and sold. Construction had begun on a barracks for the Royal Engineers, however, when Colonel Richard Moody, commanding officer of the Royal Engineers, visited Derby that year, he disapproved of Douglas' choice in location. He noted American territory lay just a few miles away across easily traversed land and that Fort Langley would be impossible to defend against attack. On the 14th of February 1859, Moody selected a new site at the mouth of the Pitt River on the north side of the Fraser and suggested the town be named Queensborough. In July of that year, Governor Douglas announced Her Majesty had decided the new capital should be named New Westminster. Prior to the Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, Fort Langley had been an important export port for cedar lumber, cedar shakes, and salted salmon packed in Douglas Fir and White Pine barrels for ships heading to the Hawaiian Islands. Once the military functions of Fort Langley had been largely outsourced to the new capital of New Westminster, the town of Derby went into decline and in order to accommodate the increased number of ships visiting the Fort, a new location was selected along the Bedford Channel, protected from the river current by McMillan Island and Brae Island. The new location is where the town of Fort Langley is now located, where Glover Road meets the Fraser River. Between the 1850s and the 1920s, the town of Fort Langley witnessed the threat of Russian invasion in the early 1850s, the threat of American invasion in 1857 at the discovery of gold in the Fraser River, the unification of the colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia in 1858, the boom and bust of the Gold Rush from 1858 to 1865, Canadian Confederation in 1871, and the arrival of the first train early in the 20th century. In 1921, a major saw mill opened on an 88-acre riverfront property. The mill brought jobs and prosperity to the struggling town since the railway had removed most of the shipping roles of Fort Langley. The town largely grew up around the mill becoming a blue collar working class community through the 1960s and 70s. By the end of the 1980s, redundancy and aging machinery meant the end was nearing for the mill. Interfor downsized its staff and, for a time, tried to reinvent the mill into a value-added venture but by the mid-1990s, the mill shut down for good. In 1921, Dr. Benjamin Marr planted Horse Chestnut trees along the Glover Road frontage of their property in Fort Langley.〔(Birthplace of B.C. Gallery - HERITAGE MATTERS: Bloomin’ Horse Chestnuts exposed )〕 Today these trees can be seen when entering the Downtown. With the increase in education levels and a transition from blue collar to white collar commuters and professionals, demand for new housing in this quaint village has skyrocketed. The former site of the local lumber mill was controversially rezoned for medium density residential in 2005 and in 2006 construction began on a massive masterplanned community that has been named Bedford Landing. This new development will eventually add approximately 1,500 new people to a community that has prized itself on having a stable population of around 2,500 to 3,000 for multiple generations. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Fort Langley」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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