Prince Rupert, British Columbia

Prince Rupert is a port city in the province of British Columbia, Canada. It is located on Kaien Island near the Alaskan panhandle. It is the land, air, and water transportation hub of British Columbia's North Coast, and has a population of 12,300 people as of 2021.

Coast Tsimshian (Ts'msyen) occupation of the Prince Rupert Harbour area spans at least 5,000 years. About 1500 B.C. there was a significant population increase, associated with larger villages and house construction. The early 1830s saw a loss of Coast Tsimshian (Ts'msyen) influence in the Prince Rupert Harbour area.

Prince Rupert replaced Port Simpson as the choice for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTP) western terminus. It also replaced Port Essington, 29 km (18 mi) away on the southern bank of the Skeena River, as the business centre for the North Coast.

The GTP purchased the 57 km² (14,000-acre) First Nations reserve, and received a 40 km² (10,000-acre) grant from the BC government. A post office was established on November 23, 1906. Surveys and clearing, that commenced in that year, preceded the laying out of the 8.1 km² (2,000-acre) town site. A $200,000 provincial grant financed plank sidewalks, roads, sewers and water mains. Kaien Island, which comprised damp muskeg overlaying solid bedrock, proved expensive both for developing the land for railway and town use.

By 1909, the town possessed four grocery, two hardware, two men's clothing, a furniture, and several fruit and cigar stores, a wholesale drygoods outlet, a wholesale/retail butcher, two banks, the GTP Hotel and annex, and numerous lodging houses and restaurants. The first lot sales that year created a bidding war.

Prince Rupert was incorporated on March 10, 1910. Although he never visited Canada, it was named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, the first Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, as the result of a nationwide competition held by the Grand Trunk Railway, the prize for which was $250.

With the collapse of the real estate boom in 1912, and World War I, much of the company's land remained unsold. The GTP also planned a large hotel, the Château Prince Rupert, connected to a railway station and passenger ship pier, all of which went unbuilt. Charles Melville Hays, president of the GTP, whose business plan made little sense, was primarily responsible for the bankruptcy of the company, and the establishment of a town that would take decades to achieve even a small fraction of the promises touted. Mount Hays, the larger of two mountains on Kaien Island, is named in his honour, as is a local high school, Charles Hays Secondary School. The Prince Rupert station, a listed historic place, replaced a temporary building in 1922.

Local politicians used the promise of a highway connected to the mainland as an incentive, and the city grew over the next several decades. US troops finally completed the road between Prince Rupert and Terrace during World War II to help move thousands of allied troops to the Aleutian Islands and the Pacific. Several forts were built to protect the city at Barrett Point and Fredrick Point. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Canadian government planned to level off Mount Hays, the largest mountain to the southeast of the city, to allow for a potential airstrip due to its tactical location and advantage.