Bow City – November 1924
From village to coal camp
Following disorganization, life in the settlement formerly known as the village of Bow City revolved around the Prairie Coal Company mine. The remaining community quickly evolved into a coal camp, serving the mine and the rapidly decreasing number of farmers in the Eyremore area.
“This village is being disorganized”
By September 1916 officials in Edmonton had opted to pull the plug on the village of Bow City. In a letter dated September 8, Deputy Minister Jno. Perrie asked A.D. Fidler to “go into the matter with the ratepayers sometime before the end of the year so that the necessary arrangements can be made for [...]
Piercing allegations sunk Bow City’s chief booster
1916 was a bad year for Herbert Chandler Pierce. As the year drew to a close the village that Pierce had once promoted so vigorously now appeared on the verge of extinction. As the residents of Bow City dispersed like tumbling kochia weed, thoughts of the little outpost on the prairie were likely the furthest [...]
Exodus
The exodus from the Village was swift and unrelenting. By 1916 only the Bow City Trading Company, Campbell Bros. Hardware, Brewer’s Livery Stable, the post office and seven houses remained in the village. Even the newly–elected secretary-treasurer of the village, former lumber merchant “Colonel Sam” S.E. Armstrong, plied his trade down the trail in Retlaw. [...]
A city in name only
While the civic fathers remained confident that the village of Bow City would rise like a Phoenix from the scorched prairies, by 1914 most had tired of the empty promises of a railroad and prosperity. With the arrival of the Suffield subdivision branch line to the prairie south and west of the village, new communities [...]
Proud
“These people were really engaged in a struggle that was of a spiritual nature much more than a material one, I think. You talk about the economics, and I talk a great deal about that in what I’ve written, but I have come to the opinion that the really important thing that they were engaged [...]
Walter spelled backwards
The C.P.R’s Suffield subdivision – Part Two of Two While rumours continued to surface about possible links to Lethbridge, the final destination of the Suffield subdivision remained a mystery well into 1913. On April 24, any hopes of a link up with Kipp were dashed when the Lethbridge Herald confirmed that the Suffield line would [...]
Bow City’s well runs dry
Just as Bow City’s civic fathers were launching a campaign to promote the Village to investors here and abroad, events a world away would have a deleterious effect on the “City of Natural Resources”.
The Alberta Land Company
As the Canadian Pacific Railway was busy sinking money into its two million acre irrigation project on the north side of the Bow, other similar schemes on the south side of the river hoped to capitalize on the growing demand for irrigated lands.
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Drawing on over 100 years of family history in the southeast, this is my attempt to shine the spotlight on southeastern Alberta's forgotten history.
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