Clover Point is a park of about 10 acres (4 ha) owned by the City of Victoria located between Ross Bay on the east and Finlayson Bay on the west, about 2.5 miles (4 km) southwest of Oak Bay and 1.6 miles (2.6 km) southeast of downtown Victoria, British Columbia. The point was named for the abundance of red clover that grew here when James Douglas, the Chief Factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company landed on the point in 1842. Hudson’s Bay Company employees routinely landing at Clover Point and walking north to reach Fort Victoria. Ross Bay is named for Isabella Ross, a Métis woman who was married to Hudson’s Bay Company trader Charles Ross, a founder of Fort Victoria. Following the death of her husband in 1844, Isabella was deeded 99 acres (40 ha) above the bay and was the first registered female landowner in British Columbia. Finlayson Bay is named after Roderick Finlayson who worked for Charles Ross in the building of Fort Victoria in 1843–1844, and in 1859 became the Chief Factor of the Hudson’s Bay Company.
Clover Point was a strategic location for First Nations and was a defensive site long before white settlers came to the region. Prior to the construction of the James Bay Causeway in 1901, there was a tidal stream connecting Ross Bay with the Victoria Harbour. The stream that The Empress hotel would later be built over was unnamed and flowed from a wetland that connected to another creek that ran into Ross Bay. Oral history indicates that the First Nations would use this waterway as an alternate canoe route and when the tides were high they would paddle from Ross Bay to the inner harbour thereby avoiding the heavy weather on the outer coast. Clover Point was later used as a rifle range by a local gun club, and during World War I, soldiers used the rifle range for target practice. Fishermen built small boathouses on the rocks at Clover Point that were used until 1932 when they were destroyed by a storm. The City of Victoria prohibited the fishermen from making repairs or rebuilding their destroyed boathouses. Instead, City Council agreed to lease an area to the fishermen to construct one new building to accommodate all their boats, on the condition they also supply boats to rent to the public. To accomplish this, the fishermen were incorporated under the Societies Act as the Clover Point Anglers Association.
The City of Victoria sewage was first piped to Clover Point in 1892. The first sewer line was made of bricks and flowed underneath Dallas Road. That outfall pipe extended just 3 feet (1 m) below the low tide line, and a sewer pipe has been in continuous operation at Clover Point ever since. A pump station was built in the 1970s and pumped sewage directly into the ocean. Today, an expanded station pumps wastewater to a treatment plant in Esquimalt and provides bypass pumping to the existing outfall during storm events. The new pump station is underground and below the grade of Dallas Road. The expanded facility has been constructed out of materials that allow it to blend with the existing facility and surrounding area. The project includes upgrades to a number of public amenities, such as public washrooms, pedestrian and bicycle paths, bicycle facilities, a public plaza, street furniture, and road intersection improvements. Read more here and here. Explore more of Clover Point here:
