Alternate spellings: MacDonald Creek
The creek name acknowledges McDonald’s brief presence in the creek valley, and is the most enduring record that survives of the mineral claims he staked there.
A bit of a different post this week: three different creeks named after people that we either don’t know enough about, or aren’t locally interesting enough to warrant a post of their own.
Now some seventy-three years old, Slade continued to work … “tossing boulders out of icy, knee-deep water” and preferring to “wrestle with fifty pound boulders” compared to some of the easier tasks of working a [mining] claim.16
Other names: Lake Maye, Lake of the Hanging Glaciers
“The Glaciers are certainly a spectacle. They hang. They do hang.”30
The fortunes of Thomas Starbird took a sharp turn in Autumn 1913, when Mountain Valley Ranch was destroyed in a fire with all of its contents. There was “very little” insurance.
You won’t likely find Munn Lake on a map: it’s a local name that many locals don’t even know is local. I certainly didn’t. If you want driving directions on your phone type in Wilmer Lake, but if you ask a local there’s a chance they won’t what you’re talking about.
The area of Law Creek (and now Mount Law) is interesting in that it is named after a man who, by all accounts, had left the Kootenays by 1892 never to return. It is also unique as the name “Law Creek” is the best evidence I’ve been able to find for Charles Frederick Law ever having done prospecting work in that area.
Sally Farnham was an established member of New York’s high society, a wife, and a mother, but she also became a successful and sought after sculptor, noted for her “keen eye and her ability to capture individual character.”
Associated Names: Named after the Red Line group of mines at the head of the creek. The Red Line (1898-c.1902) was also known as the McDonald Mines (1902), the Ptarmigan Mines (1903-1920s), and Selkirk Ptarmigan Mines Ltd (1958-1964?)
“There is no doubt that the mine will never be reopened again, and there is also no doubt that a great deal more money was spent on the property than ever its showing of ore warranted.” (Report to the Minister of Mines, 1915)
“Jim considered the proposal with drunken gravity and when I mentioned that there was still a bottle of whiskey… he handed Kelly over on my promise that I would lock him up. I had to keep my hands on him until inside the government buildings and then the old brute abused me like a pickpocket. I’ll never forget the figure of fun he made, sitting behind his desk with a muzzle-loading Colt revolver in each hand.”
In The Windermere 