First Narrows (Vancouver)

First Narrows is one of the names given to the mouth of Vancouver, British Columbia's inner harbour.[1] In 1909 the DGS Mastodon was ordered from a shipyard in Scotland. She was commissioned in 1911. Her crew worked 24 hours a day, six days a week, from 1912 to 1917, to dredge the channel. They removed 5 million tons of material.

prior to the dredging shallow sandbanks extended far from the north shore.
First Narrows forms the western mouth of Vancouver's inner harbour.

The excavated material was a mixture of blue clay with embedded rocks and boulders.[1] Some of the boulders were too large to be scooped up by the dredge's buckets, and had to be smashed first.

A suspension bridge, the Lion's Gate Bridge, was constructed across the narrows in the 1940s.[2][3] It is tall enough to permit ocean going vessels to transit underneath.

References
  1. Fred Thirkell (2000). Vancouver & Beyond: Pictures and Stories from the Postcard Era, 1900-1914. Heritage House Publishing Company. p. 137. ISBN 9781894384155. Retrieved 2020-12-08.
  2. Jaclyn McLeod. "The First and Second Narrows Crossings of Burrard Inlet". Vancouver Traces. Retrieved 2020-12-08.
  3. Maria Rantanen (2018-11-12). "80 years ago people walked across the Lions Gate Bridge for the first time". North Shore News. Retrieved 2020-12-08. West Vancouver archives show articles going back to 1926 that describe the construction of the bridge, initially called the “First Narrows Bridge.” The West Van News, in a front-page article on May 14, 1926, declared that “Lions' Gate” was a better name as the entrance to Greater Vancouver.
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