Gold Mountain (toponym)

Gold Mountain (Cantonese: Gāmsāan, 金山) is a historical name for either San Francisco, the State of California, or broadly the western regions of North America, including British Columbia, Canada.

Ships full of immigrants docked in San Francisco to disembark passengers, initially bound for the gold fields, but later to remain in the growing Chinese settlement in San Francisco.

In the latter part of the 19th century, however, British Columbia also came to be referred to as "Gold Mountain" following the discovery of gold in the Fraser Canyon in the 1857 and the subsequent group of Chinese from San Francisco arriving by boat in June 1858, and further Chinese settlers coming from California and directly from China later on to British Columbia (which they also referred to as "The Colonies of T'ang" i.e.

[citation needed] The gold seekers in British Columbia first went to the Chinatown in Victoria, on the Colony of Vancouver Island, to obtain supplies.

Victoria was the dominant political and economic centre before the economic ascendancy of Vancouver (which has its own Chinatown), and remains the official seat of political power in British Columbia today.