The Geography of Salt Spring Island
Maps to consult: (in addition to the School District Maps)
Survey Map with Schools
Contour Map
3-D drawing of SSI (SOI p.16 “SSI Today”)
The school district boundaries were set by the Government in Victoria, following
the N-S and E-W lines on the surveyor’s map. But if the school district
boundaries had followed the lie of the land, they might have run across the
island diagonally, NW-SE.
Salt Spring is a hilly island. (When you cycle along its roads you have to push
hard to get up the long steep hills, before you can whizz down the other side
without peddling.)
The first settlers made their farms along the valley bottoms, where the
soil was good for farming. These valleys run diagonally from the north-west
to the south-east. Each valley is separated from the next by a steep rocky range
of high hills, also running diagonally from the north-west to the south-east.
Before roads were built, it was very difficult to get over these dividing ranges
to the community in the next valley.
Where valleys meet the coast, they form bays. When the first settlers
came, they found that the deep waters on the west coast were safer places for
bigger boats than the shallower bays on the east side of the island. In deeper
water steamships could tie up at docks. The settlers built long docks that reached
out into the sea, where the water was deep enough for bigger boats.
Today, boats and ferries dock on the east coast, at Fulford Harbour, Ganges
Harbour, and Long Harbour. But in the time of the first non-aboriginal settlers,
boats and steamships travelled up the deep narrow passage between Vancouver
Island and the west coast of Salt Spring Island. They were travelling between
Victoria further south, and Nanaimo further north, on Vancouver Island. (The
city of Vancouver did not exist until much later) The ships travelling up and
down the Vancouver Island coast tied up at the Island docks at Vesuvius Bay,
Burgoyne Bay, and Musgrave’s Landing. Later, on the east coast, there were
docks at Beaver Point in the south, and Fernwood dock in the north. (Ganges
did not become a town until much later)
The first Post Offices were at the docks - one of the most important things
the ships brought to the island and left with, was the mail. The mail delivered
letters and parcels, supplies and newspapers. The mail was very important in
the early days before people were linked by a telephone service.
If you remember these geographical features of the island, you will better understand
how separate communities formed. If you learn the names of the bays, you will
better remember the names of the communities. The settlers referred to their
communities by the names of the bays they used to leave the island and return
home, and where they collected and sent their mail, which linked them to the
outside world. Later, when the first settlers had cleared the land to make farms,
people referred to their communities by the names of the valleys, lakes, and
mountains, and the bays, harbours and coastal points they looked out for to
find their way from farm to farm. Later still, when there were roads to link
the communities, people began to use road names to describe where they lived,
as people do today. On the school district maps you will see the early roads
people built to link their farms. You will also see lakes, and the streams going
from the lakes to the sea. The roughest roads are indicated with dotted lines.
(If you get confused between a stream or a rough road, you can see the colour
map on the website. The streams are blue and the roads are red.)
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The Fulford Valley
The Fulford Valley runs from Burgoyne Bay to Fulford Harbour south of the Divide
and north of the mountainous south-western part of the island.
The Divide
The Divide is a steep range across the island with a cliff for its southern
edge. The Divide used to separate the island into north and south. After 1900
road crews began to cut away the rock of the Divide to make easier roads to
connect the communities in the northern and southern parts of the island. On
the 3-D drawing of the island, can you see where Cranberry Road was cut through
in 1903? Can you see where the Fulford-Ganges Road now cuts through at Rock-Crusher
Corner? (just north of Cusheon Lake - the rock-crusher came to the island in
the 1920’s)
Ganges and Central
From Vesuvius Bay and Booth Bay on the west, to Ganges Harbour on the east,
is a flatter part north of the Divide. The area around St, Mary’s Lake
is called Central. The area south-east of that is called Ganges. (The island’s
town of Ganges was farmland before the 1900’s. Much of it was seawater,
until the second half of the twentith century, when parts of the harbour were
filled in.)
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Musgrave Landing
In the southern section, sheep farmers settled early at Musgrave Landing. A
high mountain range cut these settlers off from the Fulford Valley and the rest
of the island (see the contours of the 3-D map, and the 3-D drawing of the island).
The Musgrave Landing community travelled by boat across the narrow channel to
the communities on Vancouver Island.
Beaver Point and Isabella Point
In the south-eastern part of Salt Spring Island the earliest settlers travelled
by sea, and along the coast, to get to the Post Office. Early settlers in this
area settled along the sea shore. Later, a road was made, to connect the farms
between Beaver Point and the Fulford Valley.
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