"Shootin' Creek" is a creek local to Spray, North Carolina's Charlie Poole, who did it that way first. Charlie may have been amused to syllabify the thing because it came out on his record sounding like "Shit Creek," a place all oldtime singers have found themselves voyaging on, paddleless, at times, particular when in liquor and trying to make excuses to the wife.

My opinion is that the tune probably is earlier than the Cripple Creek gold strike, but that the words, and thus the song title, could have been put to it afterward, say at the turn of the century.

According to the late Gus Meade in his magnificent book "Country Music Sources," the first reference to the tune as "Cripple Creek" is in the Journal of Am. Folklore, 1915. That of course predates any known recording.

First recording issued was by a black one-man band, Stovepipe No. 1, August 20, 1924.   The day before that, Fiddlin' Powers of Dungannon, VA recorded it.

But note this: Land Norris of Georgia recorded it in the mid-20s as "Red Creek." Milton Brown and his Brownies recorded it as "Goin' Up Brushy Fork."

My take on all this is that there was an old fiddle tune named "(your local waterway here) Creek" or "Fork" or whatever, and that the fun syllables and aliteration of Cripple Creek (and its wide publicity during the gold fever) attached that name to the old tune and gave it new impetus. Not long after that, folklorists were collecting the song, along with a few pickup verses referring to Cripple Creek, and that's how it became standard under its present name.

Wouldn't surprise me if a good few other old tunes may have acquired their present names and lyrics in much the same multistage way.

Bob