Langley City

The dissidents were upset that the political clout of the Langley Prairie community, quickly becoming the commercial and business centre of Langley, did not match its economic importance (Langley Prairie accounted for 20 per cent of Langley’s tax base). Rumblings had been heard as far back as the early thirties, but a significant move toward Langley Prairie independence came December 7th, 1950, when Langley Board of Trade president Richard Langdon publicly supported secession.

A secessionist campaign was led by a committee of prominent residents and business professionals. On September 24, 1954, when put to the vote, they succeeded in drawing 85 per cent of Langley Prairie’s approximately 900 taxpayers to their side. Brook’s words, emphasizing the disparity between tax dollars collected and spent in Langley Prairie, had provided the final wedge to officially split four square miles, with a total population of 2,025, from Langley Township. Langley City was born on March 15th, 1955.

The name of the new municipality became a bone of contention for some, and a source of confusion for many. Some Langley Township community leaders who had opposed the secession now were angry that the dissidents stuck with Langley. Some felt the new town should be named after Adam Innes, a prominent homesteader. The area was even named Innes Corners before it became known as Langley Prairie in 1911, when the post office was transferred there. Innes lived approximately where Glover Road (then the Smuggler’s Trail) meets Fraser Highway (Yale Road) today. Innes also was a major player in the incorporation of the original Langley as a municipality in 1873, and was its second reeve, serving for seven one-year terms between 1874 and 1887.

As a community, Innes Corners/Langley Prairie did not become an important entity until around 1910, when the first Interurban (B.C. Electric Railway) train rumbled through what is today’s city core. The area first came to the attention of Europeans in 1824 When James McMillan, scouting for a location for a new Hudson’s Bay Company post, came up the Nicomekl River in three roomy bateauxs. He followed an ancient native portage route (hence “Portage Park” at the foot of 204th Street) to the Salmon River. In his diary, he wrote that the plain he crossed, “with the weighty rain is becoming so soft and miry that in several places it resembles a swamp.” Following the Salmon River north they arrived at the Fraser. It would be three years, however before the first permanent British settlement on the Lower Mainland of B.C. would be established at the Derby Reach site.

Fort Langley was to play an important role in the establishment of the entire surrounding area, including Innes Corners/Langley Prairie/City of Langley. Two thousand acres of the best farmland between the Nicomekl and Salmon rivers was taken up by the Hudson’s Bay Company farm, and was not subdivided until the 1880s. Pioneers were forced to homestead outside that area, and some of the best available land was on the prairie to the south, of which James McMillan wrote, “The soil here appears to be very rich, is a black mould, the remains of a luxurious crop of fern and grass lies on the ground.” Among the earliest homesteaders, arriving before 1880, were brothers Adam and William Innes, Henry Wark, Maximillian Michaud, Thomas Henry Cudlipp, Alexander Murchison and James Mackie.

From its 1955 incorporation with a population of just over 2,000, the City of Langley has grown to almost 23,000. Near the eastern end of the Greater Vancouver Regional District, it has the third greatest retail activity in all of Greater Vancouver. Citizens enjoy more than 120 hectares of park land, and an abundance of recreational opportunities, including the Douglas Recreation Centre, walking trails along the meandering Nicomekl River floodplain, 13 developed neighborhood parks, a championship golf course (and a Par 3 planned), a new twin ice arena, as well as a swimming pool, indoor and outdoor bowling greens and the recently constructed senior resources centre�all within six square hectares. There are several educational institutions in the City, one of which is Kwantlen University College, which not only offers the courses you would expect but also a horticultural program ranked the best in the country.

The heart of the city is currently undergoing a major transformation, with several projects taking place simultaneously.