South Peace Historical Society

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  • Table of Contents

    • Part 1: First Nations of the Peace River Region
    • Part 2: The Fur Trade Era
    • Part 3: Transportation and Communication
    • Part 4: Old Timers and the Price of Land
    • Part 5: Dawson Creek: The Story of the Community
    • Part 6: Mysteries, Adventures and Indian Legends
    • Part 7: Arts, Crafts and Recreation
    • Part 8: Agriculture
    • Part 9: Church Histories
    • Part 10: Schools
    • Part 11: Health Care
    • Part 12: Industries and Enterprises
    • Part 13: Policing the Peace
    • Part 14: Pouce Coupe, Rolla, and Other South Peace Communities
    • Part 15: Chetwynd and the Fort St. John Area
    • Part 16: The Alberta Peace
    • Part 17: Natural History of the Peace River Region
    • Part 18: Interviews with Old Timers
    • Part 19: Remembering Our Veterans

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14-025: Where’s the Lake in Lake View?

© By G. R. Clare, 1998 
If you drive north on Eighth Street for about ten kilometres, you will find yourself between Kilkerran and Rolla, in the heart of the Lake View District. But you won’t find a lake anywhere around today. There was a lake, O’Callaghan’s Lake, named for the Irish settler, Tim O’Callaghan whose home quarter touched it. In all, O’Callaghan’s Lake took up about 60 acres, with 9 acres cutting into the southern part of the Ben Miller homestead to the west of it.

The Lake View area took its name from the presence of O’Callaghan’s Lake when a new school district was established in 1934, taking in some of both the older Kilkerran and Rolla districts. Instead of having to travel four miles to the Saskatoon Creek School, the Miller boys had just a short walk down the road to the school their father and other families helped build. Betty Moulton, who later became Betty Golata, was the first teacher at the Lake View School, followed by Thelma Crosson and Bev Weaver.

Like most of the rural schools at the time, the Lake View School also served as a community meeting place for the Farmers’ Institute and the Women’s’ Institute, a dance hall, and the location for a monthly church service by the minister from Rolla.

The first credit union in the Peace was established by a group of farmers in the Lake View area, meeting at the Ben Miller home in 1943, and it seemed appropriate to take the district’s name for the new organization. The lake was still there at that time, but its days were numbered!

O’Callaghan’s Lake, according to Ken Miller, was probably a burnt-out muskeg which filled with run off in the years after fires destroyed the vegetation. The lake was not deep and had only slow drainage toward the east; eventually running into Big Rock Creek which joins Saskatoon Creek just south of Rolla. Over a long period of time, this low spot had been a lake before growing in to form a muskeg then becoming a lake again and, finally, disappearing — at least for the present.

So, what did happen to the lake? O’Callaghan’s Lake disappeared in the late 1950’s when an eighteen-inch deep ditch was bulldozed on the Berge place, draining the lake in short order and freeing up about 50 acres for cropland. Along with the water went the ducks, which Ken remembers as being a real nuisance because of the damage they did to the crops and, besides, they weren’t all that good eating most of the time.

Speaking of ducks, the Nature Conservancy bought the old Miller farm about ten years ago with the idea of re-establishing the lake, through Ducks Unlimited, as a waterfowl breeding area. These plans are on hold as long as the rest of the former lake is in use as farmland, so the Miller place sits empty — the house sold and moved away from the site — and the bushes and grasses slowly reclaiming the land.

« 14-023: Mr. Palmer Leland of the Clayhurst District

14-026: The Sudeten Community »

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