Who remembers 100 Mile House in the 1950s?
Fewer and fewer people remain today to tell the tales of life at the midpoint of the last century.
The ability to provide insight into the early days of 100 Mile House is a valuable resource, with the wealth of information captive in the memories of those who helped build the town.
Fortunately, longtime local residents Chuck and Eleanor Shaw-MacLaren share their recollections of the community beginning back in the mid-1950s.
"A heck of a lot of people from that time are gone," Chuck says.
"We really started to grow in 1956/57 because of industry and tourism. The mills had moved into [100 Mile] by then."
From 1955 to 1957, the Shaw-MacLarens leased and ran the second gas station (Perrey's Service/Chevron) to be built in the Village of 100 Mile House.
Then Chuck went to work for Ainsworth Lumber for five years before returning to the "gas pumps and grease pit."
He says business was booming in the village back then, albeit on a much smaller scale than seen today.
Tourism created a fast-growing business opportunity in the South Cariboo, and Chuck notes the Chevron station was almost like a visitor centre with all the fishing maps and information they handed out.
"In the ‘50s, the fishing camps were all over the area and they were busy."
A tourist booth was then installed right next door under a huge rainbow sign that spanned the building, which went along when the visitor centre moved to its current site more than 20 years later.
Chuck explains the first fishing maps were developed by Ken Philips and Judge Steve Smele, who also published a Free Press predecessor, the Cariboo Advertiser.
The Shaw-MacLarens still have an early edition from 1956, which Chuck says he likely bought at (Dorothy) Martell's Store on 99 Mile Hill.
One advertisement has Carson's and J.A. Bruce announcing a name change for a business still in operation today: "Our feed store will be known as 100 Mile Feed & Supply, and will still operate in the old quarters, opposite the old 100 Mile Store."
Part of its news section states: "Last week, part of a Cat' fell on George Baloc's hand, badly crushing it. Fortunately, there were no broken bones."
The classifieds were on the front page (of four legal-sized, typed pages), and included a Stockholm cream separator for $18.
Heading east from the highway meant travelling on First Street past a few houses to the two blocks of Cedar Avenue, but Chuck says the "rest was bush."
He notes The Lodge community was there, and the Emissaries of the Divine Light members were an integral part of the community, building much of the town and owning most of its property.
"We did things all together. The community hall was built in 1955/56 downtown, and it was all by itself out there in the field," he says, chuckling.
"[The village] had some roads, and they had started to subdivide the whole area, but the land was still fenced and the cattle were in it."
Those bovines managed to knock the foundation down during construction of the Shaw-MacLaren's first house on Cedar Avenue.
Eleanor says there were no buildings from the hall to First Street where The Lodge ran a large general store and post office, which soon moved to the building where Selvidges and The Outlaw are today.
Chuck recalls that Harry Nelson had a McCullough's saw shop nearby on Birch Avenue, in the spot later developed by Larry Pinkney into the business strip running south to the hall.
Back then, it included Shield's Restaurant, a pool hall/cafe, a jewelry store, a beauty shop, and a plumbing shop.
"The highway was developing with businesses, and Birch Avenue was developing as it grew."
After a few years on Birch, The Lodge's store was bought out by Overwaitea, which then moved a block north to the site where decades later it became Save-On-Foods.
In those days, Chuck says the population was so low that "everybody" in town was involved in pursuing much-needed services.
"We used to laugh because we'd have meetings for the hospital group, the fire department and the ambulance society all on the same night, and hardly anybody left."
Construction of the hospital was still 10 years away in 1955, and as there was no doctor in the community, residents either went to Williams Lake or Ashcroft for health care, or met up with the visiting physician.
The first doctor's office and the first drug store were located in the small building beside where Kal Tire is now, Eleanor adds.
Adjacent to today's courthouse was an apartment building constructed from materials salvaged from houses torn down to make way for Vancouver's current Granville Street Bridge, she notes.
The telephone switchboard office closed at 10 p.m., and Chuck notes residents "got hell" if they disturbed the operator phoning later than that, as he witnessed trying to check on Eleanor in hospital in April 1956.
"When our daughter Patty was born, I had to wait until after 8 o'clock (a.m.) until they could phone from Williams Lake to tell me."
Recreation opportunities moved forward, too, and he notes a parent-run skating rink brought in many visiting teams from elsewhere in the South Cariboo to play hockey with local youth.
A drive-in theatre was located beside it, where the 100 Mile Elementary School currently stands, which he says was "excellent for the town."
Eleanor adds you could hear the movies from anywhere in the village, but Chuck points out one drawback to driving with the windows down.
"At the same time, the mosquitoes were going in and out."
Other movies were shown anywhere from the community hall to the fire hall (near a water tower behind today's Tim Hortons), where they'd move the engine out and set up chairs.
Once television arrived, TV movies were broadcast in the Red Coach Inn basement, he adds.
It wasn't all fun and games, but also a lot of hard, community-building work, and some hard times as well.
In 1965, Chuck and his good friend David Ainsworth (who founded the mill) were among the very first search volunteers to arrive at the hideous scene of a Canadian Pacific Airlines DC-6B airplane crash near town that killed all 53 passengers.
Despite knowing there were no survivors, he notes most of the town turned out to help search, due to the large area of scattered bodies in the forest.
"I was there for three solid days. When the thing was blown up, it blew the tail section off. The people were ... spread over a two miles squared area."
Chuck says it was "not a very nice time" and afterward, understandably, he and the others on his search team didn't talk about it much.
"It was a terrible thing to have happen. And we were just not used to that sort of thing."
When the Shaw-MacLarens first came to 100 Mile, the power had only recently gone to a 24-hour generator, thanks to The Lodge manager Ross Marks.
Any children who went on to secondary school lived in dormitories in Williams Lake all week, he notes.
Serving on the first village council (along with Ainsworth, and Marks as mayor) when 100 Mile House was incorporated in 1965, Chuck became an alderman for 12 years, and was named Freeman and given a key to the city in 1977.
Around that time - 20 years after their arrival - the Shaw-MacLarens built the Coach & Waggon Recreation golf course and racquetball courts (later renamed the Marmot Ridge), which they ran until 1991.
Eleanor says she was the bookkeeper at the Chevron station, and later made all the sandwiches at the Coach & Waggon lunch counter.
The Shaw-MacLarens still live in the community today and in the house in town they built in 1970.