Mount Lehman or Mt. Lehman (49°07'00"N, 122°23'00"W) is a small rural community located in the Fraser Valley of south western British Columbia, Canada. The community was established in 1874 and became part of the District of Matsqui in 1892. The District of Matsqui was incorporated into the present day City of Abbotsford, British Columbia in 1995.
Mount Lehman is situated on an area of upraised land (hence, where the "Mount" comes into the name), that lies between the flat plains of Matsqui Prairie to the east and Glen Valley to the west. The original historic community can be roughly bounded by the Fraser River in the north, Harris Road in the South, Bradner Road in the West, and Matsqui Prairie in the east.
Mount Lehman is named for Isaac Lehman. In 1875, first cousins Samuel and Isaac Lehman pre-empted many acres of land in the area.
History
In 1874 the area consisted of a heavily wooded plateau of massive cedar and fir trees, sandwiched between two fertile plains just south of the Fraser River. This hardly seemed a likely place for a burgeoning farming community. However, in April that same year, Royal Engineer Alben Hawkins arrived to survey the area and took up residence on the escarpment overlooking the Matsqui Prairie. He became the fourth Anglo-Caucasian to settle on the upraised land that separated Glen Valley and the Matsqui municipality. Charles Malcolm Nicholson and his wife Priscilla and their eight children were already settled there since about 1872, about 1 kilometer to the S.E of Hawkins. However, Nicholson was not a landowner.
Two years later, cousins Sam and Isaac Lehman arrived. Isaac Lehman, and his brother in law, Christian Musselman who were the second pair to be granted pre-emption lands on the escarpment close to Hawkins plot. Christian Musselman's land was directly west of Alben Hawkins while Isaac Lehman's 1/4 section was some distance closer to the Fraser River, located at the NE corner of section 11 township 14. Christian died un expectantly and Isaac's cousin Samuel, his wife Katherine and their six children arrived to take up Christian Musselman's pre-empted lands. These pioneers of the 1870s established the small community that would eventually bear the family name.
Of note is that two other families arrived and settled the N.W. side of the Mount Lehman escarpment prior to 1868. Moses Graff and A. Patterson settled at the far east end of the Glenn Valley. Fort Langley, the HBC outpost, was located at the far western portion of Glenn Valley and it was established in the late 1820s.
A wharf was soon built on the Fraser River at the spot at foot of the bluff and this became known as Lehman's Landing. The landing became an important riverboat stop east of Fort Langley. At the time it was the only entry point into the Matsqui area and was served by paddle-wheel steam boats that travelled up and down the Fraser River between Yale and New Westminster. Lehman and other settlers took on the huge task of logging the area, clearing the dense coastal underbrush and building a network of trails. One of those trails, leading from the wharf to the farming settlement, was called Landing Road. Landing Road was open for vehicular traffic until 1950, and while some of the road remains, the last few hundred metres of the route to the river landing is now just a walking trail. Pilings in the river still remain to mark where the wharf once stood.
Mount Lehman was an attractive location for newcomers, as it was safe from the Fraser's summer floods and plagues of mosquitoes. Once cleared, the forest floor yielded rich farming and pasture lands. People came to settle and by 1883, Thomson's General Store operated at Lehman's Landing. The Mount Lehman Post Office began operation May 1, 1884. The first one-room school was also built in 1884 near the site of the current school. It was replaced by a two-room building sometime between 1909 and 1912, and is the oldest continuously operating school in the Abbotsford School District. The Mount Lehman United Church was established in 1894, and the community hall was built in 1904. The school, hall and church have all operated continuously since they were created.