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British Columbia Tourism Region : Kootenay Rockies
Description From Owner:
Perry Creek
- The area around Cranbrook was formerly known as Joseph's Prairie, and here the Kootenay Indian village of A'Qkis ga'ktlect (meaning 'two streams going along together') once stood.
- An early colonist, Colonel James Baker, sometime provincial Minister of Education and later Minister of Mines, settled here in 1885 and named his estate Cranbrook Farm, after the little Kentish town of Cranbrook from which he came.
- When a townsite was laid out in 1897, the name of Cranbrook was taken for the new settlement. Cranbrook became important as a divisional point after the opening of the CPR's Crowsnest line in 1898, and it was incorporated as a city in 1905.
- Jim Smith Lake - Presumably after the James Smith who was one of a party of five prospectors from Walla Walla, Washington, who arrived at Wild Horse in March 1864.
- Norbury Lakes - After the Hon. F. Paget Norbury, an Englishman who ranched in the district in the 1890s.
- Perry Creek - After Frank Perry, or Francois Perrier, a French-Canadian Métis who discovered gold here in 1867 or 1868.
- St. Eugene Mission - When Father Leon Fouquet, OMI, founded this mission in 1874, he named it after a namesaint of the founder of his order, Charles Joseph Eugene de Mazenod (1782-1861), Bishop of Marseilles.
- (St. Eugene, Bishop of Carthage, died in exile in 505 AD.)
- St. Mary River - This name goes back at least to 1865, when it was mentioned in the British Columbian, the early newspaper published in New Westminster.
- The naming is often erroneously attributed to Father Fouquet, OMI, who did not visit Kootenay until 1874, when he founded St. Eugene's Mission on this river.
- Wild Horse River - David Thompson, who called the stream Skirmish Brook, mentioned the herds of wild horses to be found in this country as early as the beginning of the nineteenth century.
- The stream seems to have been given its present name by Jack Fisher, leader of the party of miners who found gold here in 1863.
- His eye was caught by a white horse on a hillside, and consequently he named the stream either Stud Horse Creek or Wild Horse Creek.
- The latter name soon became universally used. The Geographic Board of Canada later promoted the creek to a river.
- The gold camp of Fisherville grew up near the stream and prospered until the miners realized that it was situated on top of rich placer deposits.
- The houses were then hurriedly dismantled or, in some cases, burned down and a new settlement, Wild Horse, built on another site.
- With permission from G.P.V and Helen B. Akrigg 1997 British Columbia Place Names. UBC Press.
Address of this page: http://bc.ruralroutes.com/Cranbrook
