The West Otago Community Board is considering whether there should be a war memorial for the former Kelso township.
At this week's board meeting in Tapanui, board member John Herbert said his father, Peter, asked for the possibility of a Kelso war memorial to be raised. Mr Herbert said Kelso was "huge" in its day, and relatives of those from the area who served in the two world wars should have somewhere to remember them.
In its heyday of the 1960s and 1970s, Kelso boasted a population thought to be near 300. It had a three-teacher primary school, shops and hotels, and a railway line ran through the centre of town.
It also had a large rural centre with saleyards, a Presbyterian church, a telephone exchange and a town hall.
Two big floods in the space of two years sealed the township's fate. The "100-year flood" of 1978 swept through Kelso but the town was rebuilt, only to be wiped off the map when another flood struck in 1980. After the clean-up in 1980, government agencies and local catchment boards prevented any further building in the flooded area and Kelso, to all intents and purposes, ceased to exist.
The Kelso honours board hangs alongside the Heriot honours board in the Heriot Community Centre after the township was officially abandoned in 1981.
Board members agreed to speak to members of the West Otago community to gauge if there was public support for the idea.
