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Get your ad here

It’s Creston! It’s Sirdar! It’s Creston! It’s . . . confusing

Featured in In the Daily Buzz - Apr 04, 2012
Tammy Hardwick - Manager - Creston & District Museum & Archives
It started with a small paragraph in the Nelson Daily Miner newspaper of Jan. 24, 1899: “The lively little town at the eighth siding on the Crows Nest Pass line is having considerable trouble with its name. First it was called Creston and then when the CPR named its stations and one was called Sirdar the public mixed it up with Creston. But the CPR changed Creston to Fisher, not Sirdar, and as Fisher it went. Now word comes that it is to be called Creston after all. Just how it will end, time alone will tell.”


Talk about a puzzling paragraph! Let me back up a bit and I’ll try to explain why. I think I’d better start with a quick history of the town’s name.

In the early years, Creston didn’t actually have a name. It was referred to as “Fred Little’s ranch,” after the fruit ranch of one of the earliest settlers. People living here were described as living “near Rykert’s on the international border” and mines in the region were staked “in the Goat River district,” but that’s about as a far as it went in terms of official names.
Then, in December 1898, the CPR opened its Crows Nest Pass railway. Creston was the seventh little stop west of Cranbrook on that line so it became known as Seventh Siding. A short while later, the CPR renamed it Fisher. This is nothing unusual; many pioneer communities got their official names when the railway came to town. After all, the railway had to put something on its schedules.

Trouble quickly arose, though, because a second railway was building into town – the Great Northern – and the Great Northern referred to the town as Creston. This created considerable confusion.

So, on Nov. 24, 1898, at a meeting of the local citizens, the decision was made to write to the CPR asking it to change the name on its schedule to Creston.

That the name of Creston was chosen over that of Fisher was no doubt due to the influence of Little, often referred to as “the mayor of Creston,” even though the community wouldn’t be incorporated until 1924. He chose the name after Creston, Iowa, a town he had visited and liked.

So, back to our puzzling paragraph.

This is the first thing I’ve ever seen that hints that Creston might have been called Creston before the arrival of the CPR. However, Little arrived here in 1891 and it is entirely possible that he and his neighbours were referring to the community as Creston – Little’s preferred name – well before 1898, then the CPR changed it to Fisher and later back again to Creston. A perfectly reasonable speculation, I think.

But then, there’s that pesky reference to “the eighth siding.” Maybe that was a typo and the author of the paragraph really meant to say “seventh.”
Umm, maybe not. Because on Dec. 9, 1898, the Miner published this little snippet of news: “The CPR has changed the name of the new town of Creston on the CPR railroad to Sirdar in honour of General Kitchener.” Things got even murkier with this announcement a day later: “The complete list of the changes in names made on the CNP line up to date is as follows: . . . 5th Siding now Yahk; 6th Siding or Russell Creek, now Kitchener; 8th Siding or Creston, now Sirdar.”

OK, so now it seems clear that the town of Creston/Sirdar the newspaper is referring to is what we now call Sirdar, and the community at the seventh siding didn’t have its name changed at all. This is supported by an article on Dec. 23 detailing the cost of travelling from Nelson on the new Crows Nest Pass line: $2 for the steamship fare to Kootenay Landing at the south end of Kootenay Lake, then five cents per mile on the train. Total cost to Sirdar, $2.15; to Fisher, $2.95; to Kitchener $3.35; and so on.

So, clearly, they were two different communities – one close to the south end of Kootenay Lake, formerly called Creston, now called Sirdar, and another about 16 miles further away called Fisher, later to be renamed Creston.
Are you still with me?

But (there’s always a “but”) . . . on Dec. 19, 1898, the Miner published an article that’s your typical promotional piece, highlighting all the glories of a new town in order to attract new settlers and new business. It’s exactly what you would expect to see about the communities along a brand new railway line.

The title of the article is “Sirdar Booming” – but it refers to Creston.
The article says the community, about halfway between the border and Kuskonook, was previously known as Fred Little’s ranch. It mentions a sawmill owned by “Messrs Byers and Bigelow” (that’s the Goat River Lumber Company, later renamed the Creston Lumber Company, which was located across the tracks behind the present-day Extra Foods).

It talks about the seven hotels and five general stores being built – the exact numbers that appear in the Creston listing in the Henderson’s Directory of BC Towns for 1899. (Sirdar, on the other hand, barely registers at all in that directory.) It says there are numerous mining claims near the town, on Goat Mountain.

My conclusion? The editor of the Daily Miner didn’t have a clue which town was Creston and which was Sirdar. Or maybe he was deliberately trying to mess with people’s minds. Either way, I don’t think I’m going to take his word for it that Sirdar was ever called Creston, or that Creston was ever called Sirdar.

For more information contact the Creston and District Museum and Archives by phone at 250-428-9262, e-mail at mail@creston.museum.bc.ca or via the Web site www.creston.museum.bc.ca.

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