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Historical society looking for info on old Surrey road names

Society hoping to glean family stories from people with connections to Surrey’s early pioneers
map
A close up from a map of the Surrey municipality from 1938 shows the old street names in use at the time around Cloverdale. The Surrey Historical Society is hoping to compile enough info to release a book about the stories behind the former street names.

The Surrey Historical Society is compiling a list of the city’s old road names and they’d like to know the stories behind them.

The endeavour may result in a book, or the info may just end up online on the society's website, but a lot of work is going in in an effort to preserve the stories behind a fading past.

And the initiative began by chance. A family had contacted the Surrey Historical society (SHS) to find out about the historical connection between 182nd Street and their family.

"We had a request from somebody who had something in their heritage that referenced Thomas road, 182nd Street," explained Evelyn Wedley, SHS president. "We couldn't find anything. I searched and searched and searched. I finally got Jo (Lee) at the (Surrey) archives searching."

Lee finally came across an obituary for the patriarch of the Thomas family.

"In his obituary, it did say that he lived on Thomas road, which was named after him.”

Wedley said later she was having lunch at Ricky's in Fleetwood when she saw an old map of Surrey from 1938 on the wall. She was intrigued, but management didn't know where they got the map, so she went back and began looking through the SHS database.

She eventually found a copy of the map in the Society's old files. 

"The map has the names of roads in 1938,” Wedley said. “Then the roads were changed to numbers in 1957.”

She said that was an important benchmark because any new roads after 1957 won’t have original names and the society’s next reference point is a book from 1981. That book, Rivers Roads and Railways; 100 Years of Transportation in Surrey, lists all the numbered roads and lists the corresponding old names. So they are stuck with a 43-year gap, but the book is important because it helps clear the cobwebs on some roads built after 1957.

"182nd was Thomas road from No. 10 to 60th," Wedley noted. "From 68th to Fraser, it was Beveridge Road, which was named for my grandfather. He built that section of the road. Further down the road changes to something else."

The Society's efforts are focused on finding the history of the names behind the numbers, she added.

“We know now for whom Thomas road was named," she noted. "We obviously know who Beveridge Road road was named after. Some of them, like Scott Road, were not named after pioneers, they were named after road builders."

She said Scott Road stayed the same because Delta didn't change its names in the same way Surrey did. So Scott Road stuck.

“176th was Clover Valley Road,” she explained. “People ask, 'Where did that name come from?' William Shannon named that. He was writing home about where he was living and he didn't know what to call it. So he looked out, and all the clover was blooming, so he called it Clover Valley."

Wedley said when the train line was built, it was the railway that named it Cloverdale.

Right now, the society is calling out to anyone who may have information on the original road names and who they were named for—that may be family members with the direct connection or just other people with information.

“We're looking for stories on the names behind the roads,” she said. “A bit about the family, when they were pioneers, when they settled here, and when they built the road."

Wedley said she wants the family stories in the book to fill in a little history of the people who lived back then.

“So it's more than just road names,” she added.” How did this road get named? Who named it? There isn't anywhere that you can go to find all the history together. There's a bit here and a bit in this book and a bit in that book, but nothing together.”

If you have any info on the history behind Surrey’s old road names, email Wedley at: eewedley@yahoo.ca.



Malin Jordan

About the Author: Malin Jordan

Malin is the editor of the Cloverdale Reporter.
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