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Jim Stalker
Creston
Regarding “Uptown looks to become historic district.” Yes, by all means, let’s become a historic district. But there are some drawbacks.
If we decide to go with a historical theme in the downtown, we can’t get by with just a little bit like we did a few years ago. If you’ll remember, we put up billboards along each entrance into town. The billboards said something like, “Welcome to historic downtown Creston” with a nice line drawing in the background of the billboard signage, or something like that. It was a good start, but that’s as far as we went. It was up to our visitors to find the historic parts of our town, especially the historic downtown. The downtown will always be the downtown, never the uptown or some other catch name that all America is not familiar with.
The local people usually know where the historic places are, but a tourist does not have a clue. That’s why we need new signage and lots of it. A working railroad right through the middle of the downtown, can be a good drawing card for some. The Amtrak that actually stops in Creston twice every day, alongside a one of kind historic two-story brick depot can be another.
Drawing from the internet, Creston was settled in 1868 as a survey camp for the Burlington and Missouri Railroad. It wasn’t unti 1871 that Creston was officially incorporated as a town.
While not all of our buildings in the downtown are age related, some are very aged and of much interest. As mentioned earlier, the railroad depot, the federal courthouse and post office, the First National Bank building on the corner of Maple and Adams streets, the old power generating building, all and more still standing today in the old downtown. One cannot forget the memorial fountain the Southside built to honor Company C 3rd infantry, who were mustered into service and sent to the Mexican border to help fight Pancho Villa who had fled there after making raids into the United States. There is much history to make people aware of in Creston. Some, like the fountain, need better signage to increase tourism. We could turn this town into a real historic town, but billboards alone won’t do it.
I hate to bring this up, especially since so much effort has been put into the murals, but perhaps future murals would be better slanted to reflect the early years in Creston, for tourism sake.