Mount Maxwell Provincial Park
provincial park on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, Canada
Mount Maxwell Provincial Park is a provincial park in the Gulf Islands of British Columbia, Canada. It is located on Burgoyne Bay and the Sansum Narrows on the western shores of Saltspring Island.
It was established in 1938 for the views afforded from Baynes Peak, the highest point on the mountain, which encompass Vancouver Island, the Gulf Islands and mainland British Columbia. It has an area of 231 hectares, but is adjoined by the Mount Maxwell Ecological Reserve to the west, and Burgoyne Bay Provincial Park to the south, creating a contiguous area of over 1100 ha of protected land.
History
Mount Maxwell was initially named Mount Baynes by Admiralty surveyor George Henry Richards, after Admiral Sir Robert Lambert Baynes in about 1859. However, local inhabitants began calling it Mount Maxwell, a name which was officially accepted in 1911. When the park was created it was agreed to name the summit Baynes Peak. The Indigenous placename for Mt. Maxwell in the Hul'qumi'num language, is recognized as Hwmet'utsun, which means 'bent over place'.
Accessibility
The mountain top can be accessed by gravel road, or by hiking trails from the north-east or Burgoyne Bay Provincial Park to the south.
“Mount Maxwell Provincial Park” enters the record as provincial park on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, Canada. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mount, Maxwell and Provincial can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Mount Maxwell Provincial Park” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mount, Maxwell and Provincial provides the most credible route into that argument.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6922071. Authority coordinates are 48.804, -123.516. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1100, 1859 and 1911.
Architectural summaries often privilege surviving fabric and can understate demolished phases, contested use or displaced communities. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mount Maxwell Provincial Park” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.