In the early years of the twentieth century, technology began to arrive in the Comox Valley, starting in 1910 with telephone service. The same year, the Comox Logging and Railway Company was incorporated, and started moving steam-powered equipment to the area to exploit the stands of old growth Douglas fir lying between Comox and Campbell River. With sole access to these forests, the company quickly became the largest logging concern on Coastal British Columbia. Eventually the company had 450 employees who used six huge steam-powered logging machines, a dozen locomotives, and hundreds of miles of train track to move billions of board feet of logs down to the coast, where the timber was boomed and towed to the largest sawmilling operation in the British Empire at New Westminster. Also in 1910, the road from Nanaimo promised almost 60 years before was finally built, linking the Comox Valley to southern Vancouver Island. The first automobile owned by Walter Scott came to Comox in 1910 but at that time most of the roads were a hazard to navigate and most were primitive horse and buggy trails. Electricity arrived in nearby Courtenay in 1913 courtesy of a hydroelectric dam on the Puntledge River, but service was not extended to Comox until 1920. In 1914 the E&N Railway arrived in nearby Courtenay, and daily mail service to and from the outside world, now delivered by rail rather than ship, became quick and reliable. The influx of loggers and the attendant injuries clearly required a hospital, and in 1914, four nursing sisters from the order of St. Joseph in Toronto arrived to staff the new St. Joseph's Hospital, originally a re-purposed house with room for only ten patients, although it expanded rapidly in the following years.