Kitimat is a planned community for employees of an aluminum smelter situated on the alluvial fan of the Kitimat river at the head of Douglas Channel, about 71 miles (115 km) east-south-east of Prince Rupert and 32 miles (52 km) south of Terrace, British Columbia. The community was named after the nearby Haisla village of Kitamaat, a Tsimshian word meaning “people of the snow”. The Kitimat river drains a watershed of 491,740 acres (199,000 ha) and starts at an elevation of 6,600 feet (2,012 m) on the north-western flank of Atna Peak in the Kitimat Ranges. It flows generally north-west for 33 miles (53 km), then south-south-west for 20 miles (32 km) to Kitimat Arm of Douglas Channel. The channel is named after Sir James Douglas, the first governor of the Colony of British Columbia. The alluvial fan is formed by sediment deposited where the stream loses energy as it emerges from the mountainous uplands at the head of the fjord. Human settlements often occur on alluvial fans, especially in steep fjord topography, because they provide relatively flat terrain for construction and a water supply, despite the associated flooding hazard.

A village has been situated at the head of Douglas Channel for hundreds of years. The origin story tells of a people known as the Owikeno, who lived at the head of Rivers Inlet, travelled north after a tribal quarrel and eventually settled at the mouth of a river at the head of Douglas Channel. The river had a good supply of salmon and a run of eulachon in spring. One day they noticed a piece of carved cedar floating down the river, indicating that other people lived in the vicinity. They travelled up the valley and met another band that spoke a different language. They made friends with the newcomers and invited them to join them at the river mouth, where the two groups lived together, and the Kitamaat people, now known as the Haisla First Nation, came into existence. In 1793 Captain George Vancouver was one of the first Europeans to explore Douglas Channel thoroughly, but the village at the mouth of the Kitimat river had little European influence until 1876. That year one of the village inhabitants, a man named Wahus-gumala-yoo who was later baptized Charlie Amos, travelled to Victoria and converted to Christianity. He returned to the village and, despite the objections of the village shamans, his beliefs spread to other residents. By 1893 a residential school, a new church and a mission house were built. In 1902 Kitimat was considered as a possible terminus for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, but Kaien Island was selected and eventually became Prince Rupert.

The Aluminum Company of Canada was a major mining and manufacturing corporation established as a subsidiary of the Aluminum Company of America, whose founders invented the power-demanding process for extracting aluminum from bauxite. In 1951 the company initiated a $500 million project to build the Kenney Dam across the Nechako River and a tunnel 10 miles (16 km) long bored under Mount Dubose to transport the captured water to a hydroelectric generating station at Kemano. From there a transmission line was strung to carry the electricity over 50 miles (80 km) to Kitimat, where an aluminum smelter was established. The company also built the community of Kitimat, designed by Clarence Stein, and constructed a deep-sea terminal to import bauxite and export aluminum oxide (or alumina). In 2007 the company was sold to Rio Tinto, which now operates the smelter at Kitimat. In 2018 an investment of $40 billion was approved by the shareholders of LNG Canada to develop a liquified natural gas terminal at Kitimat which was completed and the first shipment exported on June 30, 2025. Read more here and here. Explore more of Kitimat and Douglas Channel here: