Robert W. Starratt (d. 1967) was born in New Brunswick. During the 1930s, he pioneered bush flying in the north, operating Starratt Airways from Hudson, Ontario, until it was integrated with Canadian Pacific Airlines in 1941. During World War II he served as director of steel procurement for the Depart of Munitions and Supply in Ottawa. He came to Canoe River as president of Canyon Creek Forest Products in 1950. He and his wife Iris (previously referred to incorrectly as Evelyn) moved to Cedarside in 1952, and in 1957 purchased 1200 acres of land south of Valemount. After Robert’s death his family donated 600 acres of their ranch to the province.

The wildlife sanctuary is managed by the B.C. Wildlife Branch and Ducks Unlimited.

The ranch house was built in the early 1920s by the Jayes. Three old bachelors, Charles Dredger (1883-1970), Louie Noon and Eddie Egan (d. ca. 1940), purchased the ranch in 1931. Dredger said, “That’s how this place got the name of the Stag Ranch, and it’s been staggering ever since.”

Dredger came to the area in 1911, while the Grand Trunk Pacific Railroad was under construction. He drove scows transporting supplies down the Fraser River from Tête Jaune Cache to Prince George. After guiding their unwieldy craft downriver, the bargemen then had to walk back, a distance of 160 miles. Charlie made the trip five times.

The creek is possibly named for Bill Spittal, who had doings in the area in 1907.

Ervin and Angus MacDonalds met Spittal in 1907, while they were on their way west through the Yellowhead Pass to look for land in British Columbia. They ran into Spittal and “two young Irishmen name of Monohan” while rafting across the MacLeod River. “Spittal had got this Irish company to grubstake him, as he had told them some tales about hitting good placer claims on a big creek about 10 or 12 miles west of Tête Jaune Cache,” according to Ervin. The MacDonalds accompanied the prospectors to Spittal’s creek. For three days, nobody could find any color. “Finally Spittal got worked up about it, and lost his temper and says, ‘Darn it, there ought to be gold here because I put it here!’ This blew the prospecting party all to hell.”

The MacDonalds went on to settle in the Cariboo. “Two years later we heard of Spittal,” said Angus. “Some Indians came into the 70 Mile House with a story about white men starving up in the Clearwater country, and the police came through our ranch to look for them. Apparently Spittal had got hold of some ore samples and showed them to people claiming they were from a mine he had found up there. They paid him money to take them to it in the fall and got snowed in. The only thing that saved them from starvation was shooting one of their horses.”

According to another version of the story, Spittal had convinced three partners to head up the Goat River trail from Barkerville. When an expected cache of supplies at the Fraser River was missing, Spittal’s party went to the cabin of two trappers, Steinhoff and Bogardus. The trappers offered enough grub for the prospectors to return to Barkerville. Two of the partners, Baker and McCurdie, accepted and headed back. They took a wrong turn up Macleod Creek and froze to death. Spittle and the remaining partner raided Steinhoff and Bogardus’s cabin and headed for the Shuswap Indian village at Tête Jaune Cache. There they stayed until spring, when the police came in. Spittal, an American citizen who had been in trouble for smuggling Chinese aliens, was deported.

One of three routes through Miette Pass.

Origin of the name unknown.

When the Allen-Thrasher Lumber Company set up a sawmill four miles west of Loos in 1920, they named it Snowshoe, after the nearby Snowshoe Creek, a name appearing in the 1915 Provincial Pre-emptor’s map. The company had trouble with the payroll in 1928, and when the mill burned down the next year it was the end of the line. Another small mill operated there for a while in the early 1940s. The Snowshoe post office was open from 1924 to 1944.

“On the opposite side of Robson Glacier is a rock mass of similar construction to Rearguard,” noted Arthur Oliver Wheeler [1860–1945] during the Alpine Club of Canada’s 1911 expedition to the Mount Robson area. “It has been named Ptarmigan Mountain by Coleman, from the numbers of this species of grouse — Snowbirds, they are called by the hunters, prospectors and packers, from the fact that in winter they are pure white and their habitat is at snow line — seen on the alplands below them. Unfortunately, there is already a Ptarmigan Peak, Pass and Lake near Laggan on the C.P.R., and this name will require a change. Snowbird Mountain and Pass might be substituted.” Arthur Philomen Coleman [1852–1939] explored in the area in 1907 and 1908.

“Ptarmigan Mountain” is now called “Titkana Peak.” The pass apparently does not have an official name, although it is used by the BC Parks Branch.

At the headwaters of Smoky River and Robson River.