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centralcoastbc.com
communities
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Introduction to the Central Coast of BCThe Central Coast of British Columbia is a vast and isolated landscape of old growth coastal forests, ancient glaciers and ice fields, massive watersheds, archipelagoes of islands and deep fjord inlets teemings with an abundance of natural flora and fauna. Home to the worlds largest grizzly bear and bald eagle populations, you will find rich and unspoiled estuaries, sheer cliffs of granite where mountain goat are common, sand dunes and peat bogs, wetlands and sea lion rookeries, rare and endagered plants and birds, coastal migratory and nesting sites for sea and inland species, herring, ooligan and salmon spawning rivers and sheltered bays, hot springs in their natural state and empty beaches of unparalleled beauty.
The Central Coast Region of British Columbia is situated within the Western physiographic region of Coastal Lowlands and Coastal Mountains. The Coastal Lowlands include all of the islands and the ends of mainland peninsulas and are about 10 to 25 miles wide, within the lowlands are further subdivisions of the Hecate Lowlands generally below 2000 feet in elevation while the strandflat is below 100 feet. The lowlands and strandflat were heavily glaciated and the bare granite rock shows the effects of ice erosion. Here you will find large expanses of muskeg with sparse tree cover. The Coast Mountain system features two mountain ranges, the Kitimat and the Pacific. The boundary separating these ranges follows Burke Channel and the Bella Coola River. The area is dominated by mountains which rise abruptly from sea level to over 8000 feet and by deep irregular fjords which penetrate into the mountains from the coast. These fjords are preglaciated valleys which were modified by the Pleistocene glaciation. The Cordilleran Ice Sheet covered all of the area except for some of the higher peaks. In the higher part of the Coast Mountains near Bella Coola the ice reached an elevation of about 6500 feet while to the Rainbow Range in the east the ice reached an elevation of about 8000 feet. Spectacular remnants of these ancient glaciers can still be observed into the Monarch Icefields and Mt. Silverthorne area where the ice remains at 8500 feet. Human settlement within the Central Coast has been evidenced to as far back as 10,000 years. Today, clearly defined communities exist within settlement areas with a total population of 4000+ over a 27,000 square kilometer area. This equates to about 6.75 km. per person. First Nations comprise 50% of the population and are from two distinctive language groups of the Northern Wakashan and the Salishan. Early settlers within the Central Coast can be traced to the Hudson's Bay Company, prospecting, trapping, fishing, farming and logging with a permanent settlement of Norwegian pioneers in the late 1800's. Today's residents continue to rely on the richness of the land and resources of the area for their livelihood.
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