Category Archives: Place Names

Taggart Lane

British Columbia. Road
Village of McBride
53.3042 N 120.1639 W GoogleGeoHack
Roads are not in the official geographical names databases
Doug Taggart with Horses. Date unknown.

Doug Taggart with Horses. Date unknown.
Valley Museum & Archives Society

Douglas H. Taggart was mayor of McBride from 1969 to 1977 or later. He served on the McBride Hospital Board at its inception in 1954. His wife was Ellen Lillian Porrier Taggart [1923-2014].

Derr Creek

Alberta. Creek: Athabasca River drainage
Flows S into Miette River near Yellowhead Pass
52.8853 N 118.3803 W — Map 083D16 — GoogleGeoHack
Earliest known reference to this name is 1900 (McEvoy)
Name officially adopted in 1951
Official in Canada

Named by James McEvoy [1862–1935] after S. Derr, a packer and guide from Edmonton.

Fourteen miles in a straight line from the Athabasca, Derr Creek, the largest tributary of the Miette, fiows in through three separate mouths. The valley is here wider than elsewhere and the dry open tract of grassy land between the branching mouths of Derr Creek is known as Dominion prairie.

— McEvoy 1900

References:

  • McEvoy, James [1862–1935]. Report on the geology and natural resources of the country traversed by the Yellowhead Pass route from Edmonton to Tête Jaune Cache comprising portions of Alberta and British Columbia. Ottawa: Geological Survey of Canada, 1900. Natural Resources Canada
  • Karamitsanis, Aphrodite [1961–]. Place names of Alberta. Volume 1: Mountains, Mountain Parks and Foothills. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1991
Also see:

Hihuna River

British Columbia. Former unofficial name: Fraser River drainage
Resplendent Creek
Not currently an official name.
This former unofficial name appears on:
Jobe map Jarvis to Yellowhead 1915

This name appears on the Jobe map but is not mentioned in her report.

On July 30th [1914] we left Grant Brook station on the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. We traveled with an outfit of four saddle horses and four pack horses along the Moose River, a three days’ journey to Moose Pass.

References:

  • Jobe Akeley, Mary Lenore [1878–1966]. “Mt. Kitchi: A New Peak in the Canadian Rockies.” Bulletin of the American Geographical Society, Volume 47, No. 7 (1915):481-497. JSTOR
Also see:

Blueberry Lake

British Columbia. Local unofficial name: Fraser River drainage
Headwaters of Holmes River near Continental Divide
53.3542 N 119.5436 W GoogleGeoHack
Not currently an official name.

Possibly the Meadow Lake of the Mary Jobe map of 1915.

The Blueberry Lake trail starts just past 42 km on the Holmes Forest Service Road, about 10 km east of McBride. There is a small gravel pit for parking and the signed trailhead is just past. The trailhead is a resupply point on the Great Divide Trail.

Also see:

Twintree Lake

Alberta. Lake: Smoky River drainage
Headwaters of Smoky River
53.3892 N 119.1086 W — Map 083E06 — GoogleGeoHack
Name officially adopted in 1956
Topo map from Canadian Geographical Names

This name is associated with the report of a British mountaineering party that attempted an ascent of Mount Robson in 1910. John Norman Collie [1859–1942], Arnold Louis Mumm [1859–1927], and Moritz Inderbinen [1856–1926] were assisted by Fred Stephens [1897–1920] and John Yates [1880–?]. After failing to make an attempt on Robson, they headed north up the Smoky River valley.

Here they came to a beautiful lake with two small islands, each with a single fir tree growing on it. Twintree Lake, as it was naturally named, was situated ten miles north of Moose Pass, the route by which they had first entered this country.

— Taylor

References:

  • Taylor, William C. The Snows of Yesteryear. J. Norman Collie, Mountaineer. Toronto: Holt, Rinehart and Wilson, 1973