Port Moody
Feature Type:City - A populated place with legally defined boundaries, incorporated as a city municipality under the provincial Municipal Act.
Status: Official
Name Authority: BC Geographical Names Office
Relative Location: Surrounding head of Port Moody, at SE side of Burrard Inlet, New Westminster Land District
Latitude-Longitude: 49°16'55"N, 122°49'46"W at the approximate location of the Municipal Hall.
Datum: WGS84
NTS Map: 92G/7
Origin Notes and History:

Incorporated as a City municipality 11 March 1913. Confirmed in the 17th Report of the Geographic Board of Canada, 1922, as labelled on BC Lands' map 2B, 1914; re-confirmed 6 February 1948 on 92G.

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

Port Moody Post Office was opened 1 October 1882. See also the municipality's own website.

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

"This bay at the head of [Burrard] inlet was the port originally selected by the Canadian government for the terminus on the Pacific coast of the CPR, completed in 1885. The port was named in 1860 by Captain Richards, HM surveying vessel Plumper, after Richard Clement Moody (1813 - 1887), lieutenant colonel, Royal Engineers, who in April 1858 was promoted to brevet colonel and appointed commissioner of lands and works in the new Colony of British Columbia (with a dormant commission as lieutenant governor in case of the absence or death of the governor). Moody arrived on this coast, via Panama, December 1858, in command of a corps of Royal Engineers detailed for duty in British Columbia. The detachment under his command...was disbanded in October 1863, the majority of men remaining in the colony..." [see Walbran for additional career biography; see also Victoria Colonist 1 January 1859 & 29 January 1859.]

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)

"The first trains arrived a few days after the 7 November 1885 "Last Spike" ceremony at Craigellachie (notations on BC name card). Port Moody was originally the western terminus of the CPR, but lost much of its importance when the railroad was extended to Vancouver in 1886."

Source: 17th Report of the Geographic Board of Canada, 31 March 1921 (supplement to the Annual Report of the Dept of the Interior, 1922, Ottawa)