Bute Inlet
Feature Type:Inlet (3) - Elongated body of water extending from a sea or lake.
Status: Official
Name Authority: BC Geographical Names Office
Relative Location: Between Loughborough and Toba Inlets, NE of Sonora Island, Range 1 Coast Land District
Latitude-Longitude: 50°39'08"N, 124°53'09"W at the approximate centre of this feature.
Datum: WGS84
NTS Map: 92K/10
Related Maps:
Origin Notes and History:

Adopted 5 February 1924, as labelled on BC map 2D, 1923. Confirmed 6 April 1950 on 92NW.

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

Named in 1792 by Captain Vancouver, after John Stuart (1713 - 1792), third Earl of Bute, KG. See Walbran's "British Columbia Coast Names" for additional biographical information.

Source: BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office

Bute Inlet was proposed by Alfred Waddington in 1862, as the terminus of a railway and steamboat route between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He spent five years in procuring information respecting his proposed interoceanic route (see Royal Geographical Society, Vol XXXVIII, 1868, pp.118-128). Frederick F. Whymper, artist, in his work on Alaska, gives an interesting account of a visit made to the head of Bute inlet in 1864.

Source: Walbran, John T; British Columbia Coast Names, 1592-1906: their origin and history; Ottawa, 1909 (republished for the Vancouver Public Library by J.J. Douglas Ltd, Vancouver, 1971)