British Columbia historical timeline

First Nations peoples, including the Coast Salish, Haida and Tsilhqot'in among many others, have lived across what is now British Columbia for at least 10,000 years. European exploration reached the coast in the late 18th century, and in 1843 the Hudson's Bay Company established Fort Victoria, which grew into the city of Victoria and became the capital of the Colony of Vancouver Island, founded in 1849. The 1858 Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, triggered by a gold discovery on the Thompson River, brought tens of thousands of prospectors north from California and directly prompted the founding of the mainland Colony of British Columbia that same year; the Cariboo Gold Rush followed close behind, reaching full swing by 1865 and giving rise to boomtowns including Barkerville, the era's most famous and now preserved as a historic site.

The two colonies merged in 1866, with Victoria becoming capital of the united colony, and British Columbia joined the Canadian Confederation on 20 July 1871. The 20th century brought major population and economic growth centered on Vancouver, which by the 2020s had become Canada's third-largest metropolitan area. In 2010, Vancouver and Whistler jointly hosted the Winter Olympics, the first Games held in British Columbia, while that same year the Haida Gwaii Reconciliation Act formally renamed the Queen Charlotte Islands archipelago to Haida Gwaii, part of an ongoing reconciliation process between the province and the Haida Nation.