Hope Valley

Hope Valley was more the result of random settlement than of actual town planning. Jacob Pitman first purchased an 80 acre section (Section 824) in 1839. In the early 1840s he sold a few allotments. One such allotment was purchased by William Holden in 1841, on which he set up a butcher and general store business. The site of this store was around the present corner of Grand Junction and Valley Roads. Holden is credited with naming the area "Hope Valley" after returning home in 1842 to find that his house and business had burnt down in a bushfire. But speculation only remains of his reasoning for the name.