Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands in the context of Colony of British Columbia (1858–66)

The Colony of British Columbia was a crown colony in British North America from 1858 until 1866 that was founded by Richard Clement Moody, who was selected to 'found a second England on the shores of the Pacific'. Moody was Chief Commissioner of Lands and Works for British Columbia and the first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia. Prior to the arrival of Moody's Royal Engineers, Columbia Detachment, the Colony's supreme authority was James Douglas, Governor of the neighbouring colony of Vancouver Island.

This first colony of British Columbia did not originally include the Colony of Vancouver Island, or the regions north of the Nass and Finlay rivers or east of the Rocky Mountains, or any of the coastal islands, but it did include the Colony of the Queen Charlotte Islands, and was enlarged in 1863 in the north and northeast up to the 60th parallel and the 120th meridian by the British Columbia Boundaries Act 1863 (26 & 27 Vict. c. 83). The colony was incorporated with the Colony of Vancouver Island in 1866 to create the new Colony of British Columbia (1866–1871).