The first Europeans reached this land in the winter of 1824. A decade later the first farm, the Hudson Bay Company Farm, established in Langley Prairie (now Langley City) with most settlers arriving in the 1860. The area was heavily forested, requiring significant logging to create any productive farm land. In 1909, the Vancouver, Victoria and Eastern Railway opened a new line running along the southern edge of Blacklock neighbourhood on the alignment of today’s Grade Crescent. Since there were no stations in the area, the railway’s arrival did not contribute to the development of the neighbourhood in any significant way, with the exception of some houses along Berry Road (208 Street) and Simonds Road (48 Avenue). The neighbourhood owes its name to Dr. John Blacklock, a medical doctor from England who settled in Langley in 1913, and established a 40-acre dairy farm by 207 Street (which was formerly named Blacklock Road). In 1958, Langley City purchased 28 acres of the Blacklock farm for $28,000 for City Park. In 1961, Newlands Golf and Country Club opened. In 1971 and 1972, Langley City opened the neighbourhood to small lot development with the installation of sanitary sewer lines in the entire area south of the Nicomekl River Roughly 90% of the existing homes in the neighbourhood were built over the next two decades. HD Stafford Middle School (then a Secondary School) was completed in 1970 and Blacklock Elementary School (now called Blacklock Fine Arts School) was finished in 1973 to provide for the population explosion south of the Nicomekl River.