My somewhat late contribution to #ILoveTransitWeek: some scans of the August 1958 edition of the “B.C. Electric Guide to Vancouver”. If you’re time traveling back half a century, it’s everything you want to know about transit services and electrical substations.
Here you can see Metro Vancouver pre-Trans Canada Highway, pre-Massey Tunnel, but post-Oak Street Bridge. Burnaby’s looking pretty sparse and YVR is adorably tiny. Unfortunately this map isn’t in the greatest condition, so pardon the folds and tears. I’m hoping to clean it up a bit when I have some more time. Ideally I should get it scanned in one go on a giant flatbed scanner, instead of having to stitch together eight 8.5″x11″ scans.
Coming soon (maybe?): I have a BCER map from 1955 that, unfortunately, is missing everything west of Arbutus Street.
Main map download:
[medium res / 2000x1290 / .jpg / 1.4mb] | [high res / 3500x2258 / .jpg / 4.3mb]
Downtown map download:
[1200x1574 / .jpg / 828kb]
Richmond map download:
[2000x1175 / .jpg / 1.2mb]
6 Comments
Oooo!
I’m going to link to this
Whoa — notice bus route N4 goes up “Grouse Mountain Highway” — now called Mountain Highway — if you look closely you can see it goes all the way to the top of Grouse Mountain … when I was a kid — I drove all the way up that road to the top of the skyride, and people up there were yelling at me that I shouldn’t be up there!!! But I just followed the road, it goes straight up the cut.
Awesome map… 23 Macdonald, old Georgia Viaduct, Chancellor Blvd connects to 8th, not 4th, the Fraser Street Bridge, and no such thing as Great Northern Way, and no 401 Freeway. No 16th Ave to UBC, but there is King Edward. Canada Way is Grandview Highway… North Vancouver Ferry. Take a close look at Queensborough, the Queensborough bridge we know was built in 1960, before that the railway bridge was used by motor vehicles. The “Lulu Island Bridge”, a/k/a Eburne Bridge, is a remnant of the pre Oak Street “Marpole” Bridge which crossed from Marpole to Sea Island and then to Lulu Island before the “Moray” bridge (since twinned) was built.
Only quibble, where is Inset C and D?
@Jhenifer: thanks for the link!
@Dave 2: Inset C and D are actually the downtown and Richmond maps.
Sweet Find.
A few amazing things that I notice, The 41st Bus didn’t go to UBC it started from the Crown Loop it also only went as far as Victoria and then turned around. Which now I know why Beatrice between 43 and 41st used to have trolley wires in the past. Or at least I seem to remember them as a kid. 41st Ave after Victoria is actually broken up
Also there was no bus route on 49th Ave. Yet there was the #45 along 45 ave between
Victoria and Joyce. At which time I it turned to go up Joyce
Also 49th Ave heads straight for boundary and doesn’t curve to meet up with Imperial like it does today.
Something else I notice. In the East-West Routes the route numbers are the same no matter the direction. Yet with the North-South routes they are different depending on the direction. Example the Knight street bus going NB is 23 SB is 22. Victoria NB is 20 SB is 25 etc.
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Owen, Eric Bucad. Eric Bucad said: RT @pw3n: Blog post: Vancouver Transit Map from 1958. #ILoveTransitWeek – http://tinyurl.com/2g3pb63 [...]
[...] here they are now. The first is from Owen, who posted a Vancouver transit map from 1958! Check out his post for more pictures and hi-res map [...]