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Exceedingly rare first printed map of North Vancouver and West Vancouver by Vaughan & McCartney, a comprehensive real estate plan produced in 1891, the year of the founding of the District of North Vancouver.

This map is the first published map to focus on the initial plans to develop Vancouver's North Shore. It focuses on the area of the modern cities of North Vancouver, West Vancouver and the District of North Vancouver, in addition to most of Vancouver Harbour and a large portion of the City of Vancouver.

The first Anglo-European settlement on the North Shore was at Moodyville 1862 (depicted on the map), which for three decades remained nothing more that a lumber camp. Following the founding of the City of Vancouver in 1886, and the extension of the Canadian Pacific Railway to that city's downtown, land speculators anticipated development on the North Shore of Burrard Inlet.

In 1891, the provincial government charted the foundation of the District of North Vancouver, which then included all of Vancouver, as well as the City of West Vancouver. With the exception of Moodyville, government lots and the several Indian Reservations, almost all of the commercially viable land fell under the control of the Rand Brothers Real Estate firm of Vancouver. The company was founded in 1884 by Charles D. Rand and his brother Edward E. Rand, and quickly became the leading land company in the Lower Mainland.

The Rand Brothers hired the surveying firm of Vaughan & McCartney to divide North Vancouver into numbered cadastral lots ready to be sold to private buyers. The surveyed area extends from Deep Cove in the east along the North Shore, to Eagle Harbour in the west, and inland up both the Capilano and Seymour valleys.

While many of the surveyed lots were sold to private buyers as planed, the recessions of the 1890s greatly hindered development. The District of North Vancouver faced insolvency, and was broken up into three parts, one remaining as the District, one forming the City of North Vancouver (founded 1907), and one forming the City of West Vancouver (founded 1912). Follwing World War I development of the North Shore progressed at a rapid pace, with the creation of large new housing estates such as the Guiness Family's British Properties (West Vancouver) and the completion of the Lions Gate Bridge in 1938.

While there are earlier maps that depict the North Shore, the present issue is the first printed map to detail the initial plans to develop the area as an urban zone, and is therefore the very first map to depict the modern entities of North Vancouver (both the District and the City) and West Vancouver.

This important map is exceedingly rare. OCLC locates only a single copy at the University of British Columbia and we note no examples on-line or in any other reference work.