Naming the West : Stories

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Millarville Senior Story 2:
Millarville - Plummer's Road

There's a sign on Highway 22 that says Plummer's Road, and if you are going south it shows on the right hand side and the opposite if you are going north. In about 1950 there was two people, two families that came from England. One was John Plummer and his wife, and the other was Tom Owen, and his wife Jenny, and two kids. They bought the land in this corner right here. They bought twenty acres and put two little houses. The houses would have both fit in this room, they were that small. But when you come from England, houses in England are pretty small. You put three houses in this room here, in the olden times in England. And they both fellows worked at Ogden shops, the CPR repair shop in Calgary. And Plummer and his wife stayed there probably in the vicinity of thirty years. Then he retired and they went back to England. Mr. Owen and his wife stayed and they bought deceased since that time, but they ve got four kids who stay in the area, they live in Calgary but were raised in that area. So for some reason, for the life of me I have no idea why or who or what, but somebody said that road should be called  Plummer s Road .

That was because it was always Plummer s Corner .

It was the main road going west which meets 762 further back west, it comes from Bragg Creek. So it could have been called  Cathorn Road, because the Cathorn s had the land there. It could have been called Carslone-Denude, because Carslone-denude had land back there, it could have been called Standishes because Standishes had land right there. There were various people who owned landed for a longer period of time than Plummer did, but somebody came up with the idea of Plummer and that s where we re at today.

He lived on the corner, and if you live on corners you often get referred to as so-and-so s corner. And that s how it always started out, was Plummer s corner,  cause he lived right at the corner. And there were no other roads heading west when you come down 22 at that point in time. From Priddis down here to Millarville that was the only road, so you turned at Plummer s corner, where Mr. Plummer lived. So in recent years, long after he went back to England, it became Plummer s Road too. So I don t think he or his family probably have a clue that there s something named after them here in this part of the world. So it isn t that he was famous or did a lot of renowned works in the area, it was just that he happened to live on the corner. After he went back somebody painted it pink, and I remember Square Butte ladies were having a bingo where a radio station come out and did bingos. And the radio announcer told over the radio to turn at the corner where there was the pink house. Well, between the time that the radio announcers got the word to turn at the pink house, in that day or two the house was painted, and it was no longer painted the day of where the people were supposed to turn, it wasn t pink any longer. But it s all hidden by trees now.

3:18 video (7.84 Mb)

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