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ZEBALLOS, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, is celebrating its 50 (superscript th) anniversary as an incorporated municipality but Zeballos has a history dating back much further, probably to 1791, when the Spaniards established a colony at Nootka. It is on record that a quantity of gold was shipped to Spain from Friendly Cove and it probably came from the Zeballos River since there is no other known source of gold in the area. The town and the inlet where it is situated were named Cevallos by the explorer Malaspina after one of his officers, Lieutenant Ciriaco Cevallos.
The valley of the Zeballos River was just one of many remote river valleys at the heads of inlets along the outer coast of Vancouver Island, almost unknown and unexplored until near the end of the nineteenth century when the first surge of prospecting activity took place along the coast. The iron deposits at the head of the valley were probably discovered at that time. Some of the first to pros pect this area were Scandinavian settlers from Quatsino. These people had come from places such as Minnesota and North Dakota, to settle at the northern end of Vancouver Island anticipating that big things would happen there. Earlier it had been proposed that the trans-continental railway would come...