Okay, that’s perhaps a rather every-day occurrence. But today’s mail was unusually exciting. It contained a little notecard from Jill Hood, and inside that notecard was an old postcard of Creston, dated 1909, that she found while going through “stuff.”
Seriously, the best things are found when going through “stuff.”
The postcard, shown at the top of this page, shows a view of Creston I haven’t seen in any other photo of town. It’s taken from up on Hillside Street, just round the corner from what is now 10th Avenue North. The large building on the right side of the photo is the original Catholic Church, built on the corner of 10th and Hillside in 1907. We have very few photos of that church, and even fewer that show it so early in its history.
In the background, running across the centre of the photo, is the main commercial district. Here’s a close-up of that section, so you can see it a bit better:
The tall round structure towards the left is the CPR water tower. Then, moving to the right, in the background you can see a building with a few different rooflines – that’s the CPR train station, located in the area where the farmer’s market is held today, on the downhill side of the tracks.
Keep going over to the right, and you’ll see a large, rambling white building with a single tall tree in front of it – the Munro Hotel, now the Kokanee Inn; and the twin-peaked building with the dark roof just behind the cluster of trees on the right is the old Creston Hotel, where the seniors’ centre is today.
If you look closely under that puff of white steam almost exactly in the centre, you’ll see a steam locomotive pulling into the train station, and the tall building to its left, with the peaked roof and smoke coming from a chimney – that has to be the back of the Mercantile that stood on the corner of 10th and Canyon where the bakery is now. I say “has to be,” because there’s really nothing else it could be, but photos of the back of it are so rare I can’t identify it by comparing it to other photos! But here’s pretty much the only other photo of the back of it I’ve ever seen:
This one was taken in 1915. That same tall peaked-roof structure is visible in this photo, but here we can clearly see the big front section that makes the Merc so distinctive. It’s hard to tell whether it’s there or not in the 1909 photo. I don’t think it is – I think we’d be able to see a lot more of it rising up almost as high as the peaked section. What’s your opinion?
And then, coming back up the street in the 1909 photo, between the water tower and the Catholic Church, we have a really good view of what one of Creston’s principal streets looked like 110 years ago: a few scattered houses fronting the street, with farm properties behind (and outhouses! Outhouses don’t show up very often in old photos, but I can see at least two in this one!). The farms are looking pretty undeveloped in this photo, but that’s because most of them were only established the previous year. You can see a few thin fruit-tree saplings in the foreground, but they’re a good few years away from producing anything yet.
Here’s a view up 10th in the opposite direction. It’s probably taken just a little bit later than our 1909 photo; at least; that big structure on the left side of t street here doesn’t seem to be there in the 1909 photo. On the right side of the street we have the Methodist Church (now United), three or four houses, and then, just visible at the top of the hill, the Catholic Church on the corner of Hillside. All of these buildings are visible in the 1909 photo. The Methodist Church, in the 1909 photo, is the large-ish one just in front of and to the right of the water tower. Here’s a zoomed-in version for you:
What other details are you noticing that make you want to take a closer look?
See how easy it is to get sidetracked with old photos? Thanks, Jill, for sending it!