Before arrival of Europeans Archaeological evidence suggests there was an active
Coast Salish fishing settlement at Comox for at least 4,000 years. Several of these wooden stakes were
carbon dated, revealing the oldest to be made from a
hemlock tree c.750 CE, while the youngest dated from around 1830. The Pentlatch also harvested the abundant shellfish in Comox Bay. Centuries of discarded shells resulted in a deep strata of shell fragments along the shoreline of present-day Comox now known as the Great Comox
Midden. By the 19th century, the Kʼómoks had been driven out of their lands by a particularly fierce group of
Kwakwakaʼwakw, the
Laich-kwil-tach, who raided other villages to capture slaves. The Kʼómoks migrated south to present-day Comox, where they allied with the resident Pentlatch against their common enemy. In 1791, a Spanish expedition led by
Dionisio Alcalá Galiano and
Cayetano Valdés y Flores produced a crude chart of the
Strait of Georgia and possibly visited Comox.
Captain George Vancouver arrived the following year, tasked by the British government with charting the
northwest coast of North America. Vancouver, in concert with the Spanish expedition, entered the
Courtenay River estuary between the present-day locations of Courtenay and Comox and charted the shoreline of Comox.
Nineteenth century: settlement By the middle of the 19th century, European and American settlements had sprung up in the
Vancouver area and on southern
Vancouver Island. In 1837, the
Hudson's Bay Company steamship
Beaver began to search the south and east coasts of Vancouver Island for suitable locations for new
trading posts, and subsequently set up a post in the area, calling it "Komoux". , commanded by Captain Courtenay, was a frequent visitor to the area, and was one of the first ships to use Augusta Bay and a long sandy hook-shaped spit (now "the Goose Spit") for gunnery practice. In 1848, the river flowing through the Koumax valley was informally named the Courtenay River by British sailors after their captain. In 1857, Captain George Richards of was tasked with undertaking a complete survey of the coastline of Vancouver Island, and was given authority to name local landmarks. When he arrived in the area, he confirmed the name as the Courtenay River. Scottish immigrant James Robb, age 44, and his son William realized that the shoreline along the former
Kʼómoks fishing village and the Great Comox Midden was sheltered from the prevailing south east winds by the sandy hook of the Goose Spit, and would be the only place between the Courtenay River and the Spit suitable for landing supplies. Flooding and tree falls made maintenance of this path impractical, and the trail was soon abandoned. Supplies and mail continued to arrive by ship, but service was irregular, and delivery was measured in months rather than weeks. This allowed passengers and supplies to be offloaded directly from large ships without the need for smaller boats of shallow draught. An Italian immigrant named Joseph Rodello shrewdly bought from James Robb the two lots on the shore immediately to either side of the wharf, and quickly built a store beside the end of the wharf so that his supplies arriving by packet steamer would not have to be dragged up the hill into town. Robb also managed to sell a few other lots, notably for a butcher shop and the local courthouse and jail. In 1880, Rodello's store beside the wharf burned to the ground, but he rebuilt, and the new store was reopened in 1882. In 1886, St. John the Baptist Catholic Church was built, but had to be rebuilt two years later when trees uprooted by a violent storm landed on it. That same year, the
Comox District Free Press—affectionately known as "the Yellow Paper"—began publishing. In 1893, the provincial government, without consulting the local residents, abruptly changed the name of the village, the valley and the bay from Augusta to Comox. Also in 1910, the road from Nanaimo promised almost 60 years before was finally built, linking the Comox Valley to southern Vancouver Island. The first automobile owned by Walter Scott came to Comox in 1910 but at that time most of the roads were a hazard to navigate and most were primitive horse and buggy trails. On June 10, 1916, the men embarked on SS
Princess Charlotte However, while Courtenay and Cumberland were booming with economic activity, Comox remained a sleepy village visited by rich tourists drawn by the sport fishing, golf and the newly opened ski resorts on
Forbidden Plateau. Laing, who counted ornithologists
Percy A. Taverner and Allan Brooks among his friends, would become an influential voice in the nascent conservation movement over the next 50 years, with hundreds of articles published in almost every birding and nature magazine in North America. He purchased land along the shoreline of Comox Bay, built a house he called Baybrook, and established a 900-tree nut farm. In 1924, the army abandoned its base on the Goose Spit at the request of the Royal Navy, which wanted to resume using it as a base. A new Comox school was built in 1927 to replace the one on Anderton Road, and the Little River and Knob Hill schools. The Comox 9 hole Golf Course opened as a private course in 1928 and later as a public course in 1934, a course which continues in use to this day. In 2011, the 133-year-old Lorne Hotel, still an ongoing commercial enterprise and the oldest free-standing licensed hotel in British Columbia, ==Demographics==