Celista Columbia-Shuswap Regional District, British Columbia

Community - An unincorporated populated place, generally with a population of 50 or more, and having a recognized central area that might contain a post office, store and/or community hall, etc, intended for the use of the general public in the region. N side Shuswap Lake, Kamloops Division Yale Land District

Mapped Location

Celista: The mapped location is an approximation and should not be used for navigation or wayfinding.

 

Information

General information on Celista

  • Feature Type: Place

 

Official, historical, colloquial and alternative toponyms for Celista

A brief list of names that this geographic feature has been named

Name Description
Celista Official

 

Origin Notes and History of Celista

References to Celista that document the origin of its place name

Celista (Post Office & settlement) adopted in the 1930 Gazetteer, as labelled on BC map 1EM, 1915. Confirmed as Celista (Post Office) 3 November 1932 on 82 L/NW. Form of name changed to Celista (Community) 15 December 1982 on 82 L/14.

B.C. Geographical Names in Province of British Columbia
BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office  |  Province of British Columbia

Celista Post Office opened 1 August 1908, John Riley Sr, postmaster. "Mr. Riley referred to a map and noticed that Celista Creek ran through what seemed to be the settlement, he sent the name 'Celista' to headquarters, and Celista it has remained." (Celista Pioneers, Kamloops Sentinel, 1943, p.4). See Celista Creek for additional origin information.

B.C. Geographical Names in Province of British Columbia
BC place name cards, or correspondence to/from BC's Chief Geographer or BC Geographical Names Office  |  Province of British Columbia

When a post office was to be established here in 1907 and the residents could not agree on a suitable name for it, the postal authorities suggested that it be named after Celesta Creek. Although this creek is many miles away, the name was adopted, but due to an error in reading handwriting, the name came out as "Celista". Celesta Creek is an anglicization of a well-known Shuswap ancestral name, Selesta, which appears on the 1877 Indian reserve census by George Blenkinsop, with people of this name noted as living at Little Shuswap, Neskainlith and Kamloops. Prominent among the bearers of this name was William Celesta (see Bouchard and Kennedy, Shuswap Stories, p.126), a 'doctor' who came from Salmon Arm, had land on a Neskainlith reserve west of Chase, and died in the late 1940's.

B.C. Geographical Names in Province of British Columbia
Akrigg, Helen B. and Akrigg, G.P.V; British Columbia Place Names; Sono Nis Press, Victoria 1986 /or University of British Columbia Press 1997  |  Province of British Columbia

"The last of the Indian doctors, William Celesta of the Neskainlith Indian Reserve at Salmon Arm, died circa 1948 at the age of 100." (Photograph and caption in Shuswap Stories, edited by Randy Bouchard and Dorothy Kennedy, 1979, p.126).

B.C. Geographical Names in Province of British Columbia
included with note  |  Province of British Columbia

 

Columbia-Shuswap Regional District

Political Boundaries

Last updated: 2023-09-27