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The Katzie and Whonnock natives that have lived in this favoured land for thousands of years travelled in their cedar dugout canoes on the many rivers and streams that now define our borders. The settlers that began to come here in the mid 1800's also travelled by water, on the paddlewheeler that plied the Fraser River.

Fewer than fifty families had begun the task of building a community here in 1874 when they formed the Municipality of Maple Ridge. This was the fifth area in British Columbia to incorporate, preceded only by Victoria, New Westminster, Langley, and Chilliwack, so we can count ourselves a true pioneer district. Many early settlers had worked at the Hudson's Bay Company trading post at Fort Langley, and some were members of the Royal Engineers who were dispatched to this area in 1858 when British Columbia became a crown Colony.

John McIver took up a land grant on the height of land north of the Fraser River and cleared it for farming. He had the vision to bring the men of the district together on his farm to form this Municipality. The stately western broad leafed maple trees that bordered McIver's property lent their name to both his original farm and in 1874 to the whole district. Story has it that the organizing meeting took place under the shelter of one of these maple trees. People may still visit that tree, on the south end of the first hole on Maple Ridge Golf Course, now occupying McIver's farm property.

Nothing was easy for these early pioneers of Maple Ridge, which then stretched from the Stave River on the east to the Pitt River on the west. The first task was to cut down the heavy forest cover so they could begin farming. Building roads, collecting taxes and lobbying the B.C. government for a bridge occupied early council members. Meanwhile, people formed community groups to build churches, erect schools, and begin the Fall Fairs that have continued here since 1901.

Some of that original community spirit in Maple Ridge lives on today as local groups work to volunteer their time and effort to help make this a viable, human scale district that still respects its natural endowment of water and wild areas.

Excerpts from the 1997 Ridge-Meadows Adventure Guide. Reproduced with permission from the Maple Ridge - Pitt Meadows News.

Maple Ridge was incorporated on September 12, 1874; it was the sixth municipality to be formed in B.C., preceded only by New Westminster, Victoria, Langley, Chilliwack, and North Cowichan. At that time Maple Ridge consisted of 33,000 acres, but had fewer than 50 families.

By 1874, several small communities had sprung up on the north side of the Fraser River including Port Haney, Port Hammond, Pitt Meadows, Whonnock, Albion, Ruskin, and Webster's Corners. One of the problems of small isolated communities is that they tend to stay small and isolated unless some means is found to build roads between them.

One of the earliest European settlers in the district was John Mclver, a Scot, who homesteaded where the Maple Ridge Golf Course is now located. The first Council was formed on October 3, 1874 when a group of men representing their small communities gathered at Mclver's farm to discuss incorporating the whole district between the Pitt River and Mission to allow taxation for road building. The McIver property with its ridge of beautiful maple trees which stretched for two miles along the river was the source for the name Maple Ridge.

Maple Ridge was not connected to New Westminster until 1913 with the construction of River Road and the Pitt River Bridge and was the only rural municipality in British Columbia through which the Canadian Pacific Railway passed.

Today, the population exceeds 75,000 on the same 33,000 acres.