Source of name uncertain. George Russell [ca. 1891-1981] was born in Watkins, Manitoba, and moved to Dunster in 1920, just after the bridge across the Fraser River was finished. In addition to farming, he worked as a butcher and veterinarian. He left Dunster around 1940.

John Adams, who lived in Dunster from the 1920s, claimed that his father, William Henry Adams [1889-1961], named the creek in the 1940s because horses used to be left free to “rustle for grub” in the natural meadow along the creek.