Ogden Point is a deepwater port facility and cruise ship terminal located 21 miles (34 km) north of Port Angeles and 1 mile (1.6 km) southwest of downtown Victoria, British Columbia. Ogden Point was named after Peter Skene Ogden who was a prominent 19th Century trader and explorer for the Hudson’s Bay Company.

In 1883, R.P. Rithet built piers at Ogden Point to increase shipping traffic to Victoria. In 1914, to take advantage of the Panama Canal opening, plans were laid for two breakwaters and a massive wharf to replace the piers. A British firm was awarded the contract to build the breakwaters and they were to reach out from both Ogden and Macauley Points to protect the soon to be constructed wharves from the winter gales that lashed Victoria’s southern shoreline.

The Ogden Point Breakwater was the first to be constructed. It is a long granite and concrete wall 2,500 feet (762 m) long that required over one million cubic yards of quarried rock to support the breakwater’s main structure of more than 10,000 granite blocks. Each block, quarried on nearby Hardy Island, weighing up to 15 tons was stacked in a nine-course pyramid. Attesting to the sound engineering and meticulous construction, the breakwater has not required any major upgrades since it was built, and only 136 blocks have ever required repositioning over the intervening years. The Ogden Point Breakwater was completed on schedule in 1916. Upon its completion, it was determined the Macauley Point breakwater was superfluous and was never built. Read more here and here. Explore more of Ogden Point here: