Tidbits of Alberta

[antlercarver]

In earlier post Red mentions large flocks of sharptails. I used to shoot them off the stooks also. My gram pa had a 12 gauge with full length brass shells. He reloaded with a primer, very little powder and dry peas for the shot. Very little powder was used because it was expensive and not much was needed to propel the dry peas,also lead shot was expensive. The peas were good for maybe 30 ft. but there was 100`s of chickens and it was easy to be that close. Also very little recoil.
Best part was no lead shot to chew on, we ate lots of chickens (sharptails}
I think the sharptails needed straw piles to help survive the winter. with combines there are no straw piles. Always saw them on straw piles in winter.

[KegRiver]

Originally Posted by antlercarver

In earlier post Red mentions large flocks of sharptails. I used to shoot them off the stooks also. My gram pa had a 12 gauge with full length brass shells. He reloaded with a primer, very little powder and dry peas for the shot. Very little powder was used because it was expensive and not much was needed to propel the dry peas,also lead shot was expensive. The peas were good for maybe 30 ft. but there was 100`s of chickens and it was easy to be that close. Also very little recoil.
Best part was no lead shot to chew on, we ate lots of chickens (sharptails}
I think the sharptails needed straw piles to help survive the winter. with combines there are no straw piles. Always saw them on straw piles in winter.

We used to hunt them with slingshots.
There weren't as many as some of you had, but for sure a way more then there are today. The change to combines and intensive farming did not work well for them. They needed the fence rows and fall grain supply.
They nested in the fence rows and fattened up in the pastures and the stooks.

They thrived in mixed farming areas but our modern specialized farms make life hard for them.

There were wild Turkeys back then too and we got a couple with our slingshots but by 1962 they were all gone.
I think they were domestic birds that had gone wild but I never really knew for sure where they came from.

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Originally Posted by Jack Hardin

When we lived in Calgary, we used to cross on this ferry to visit relatives in Big Valley. It is straight east of Trochu.

Cool !!!

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Originally Posted by raab

It’s said there wasn’t a horse he couldn’t ride, cattle he couldn’t rope or a man who wasn’t his friend. His exceptional talent with horses, prodigious strength, hard work and straightforward honesty earned him a place of honour in Alberta’s history.

Born a slave on a South Carolina plantation in 1845, John fled the South after the war seeking the freedom of the open Texas range.

Over six feet tall and his strength obvious, he was hired on a drive and after eating dust for two thousand miles, John reached the northern border. It was on this drive John made a good friend, Bill Moody, who appreciated John’s gentle humour and ambition. After the drive, Moody encouraged him to continue north to Canada.

In 1882, he had his chance. Tom Lynch – “the king of the cattle drivers” was hired by Fred Stimson of the Bar U Ranch to drive his herd of 3,000 cattle from Idaho to Highwood. Lynch approached Bill Moody to be one of the cowboys and Moody insisted his friend, John Ware, be part of the crew. Lynch was reluctant but he wanted Moody, so Ware was hired on and relegated to the night crew.

While Moody knew John’s skill with horses, being a nighthawk gave him little opportunity for advancement. One day John asked Lynch if he might have a “little better saddle, and a little worse horse.” By all accounts, John’s bronc ride was spectacular, earning the respect of the camp and a promotion to the day crew.

John Ware rode into Canada with the Bar U herd in September 1882. Needing men to watch over his herd, Stimson sought Lynch’s advice on which cowboys he might recommend. When asked about John Ware, Lynch bluntly advised Stimson, “You’d be a fool not to hire him.”

In his ten years on the Bar U, John’s amiable nature, skills and courage had established his reputation and his ambition was growing. Signing with an X, John filed for his own homestead land on the Sheep Creek.

John was also gaining fame, the local newspaper often recounting his skills with horses and cattle – or his brush with death. One story described him “Jumping off the side of his horse and wrestling a full-grown steer to the ground,” while another told how John and the crew were swimming cattle across the Old Man River and, unbeknownst to John, he was riding a horse that couldn’t swim. Neither could John. Floundering in the water, the cowboys roped John and the horse and drug them both to safety. “Within moments,” the newspaper reported, “his customary good cheer was restored.”

John Ware’s already legendary status as a horseman cut across the social strata, being admired by cowboys and British nobility alike. This was evident when the Quorn Ranch hired John to care for and train their horses. These were not the usual prairie scrubs, but hundreds of purebred Irish Hunters imported from Ireland.

Around this time, Tom Lynch heard that a black family named Lewis had moved to Calgary from Ontario, and their eldest daughter, Mildred, was in her late teens. Lynch arranged a “chance” meeting at the mercantile store between the two, and John received an invitation to dinner. After Christmas, he proposed to Mildred and on February 29, 1892, they were married.

When they arrived at John’s cabin that night, the windows were ablaze with light. Cautiously approaching, John and Mildred found all the neighbours gathered inside, welcoming the newlyweds home.

By 1893, John and Mildred had started their family, but the arrival of more settlers signaled the end of the open range. John moved his family and 300 cattle 90 miles east of their old homestead.

In 1902, tragedy began to stalk the Wares. Now a mother of five, Mildred had lost a baby and had never fully regained her strength. That year, the Red Deer River flooded, washing away their home. They rebuilt overlooking an area now called Ware Creek.

Early in 1905, Mildred became deathly ill and despite medical care, died in March. Grieving, John sent the children to live with their grandparents.

On a fine September day, John rode out on a dependable cow horse to check his cattle. His horse stumbled in a badger hole and fell on him, killing him instantly.

It was a tribute to his stature that his funeral was the largest in young Calgary’s history. Range cowboys and princes openly mourned the death of this former slave who was Alberta’s most respected cowboy.

Today, Alberta’s landscape is dotted with memorials to John Ware. His cabin is an historical site in Dinosaur Provincial Park and numerous landmarks, school and college buildings carry his name.

Perhaps most fitting of all, his tombstone in Calgary overlooks the Stampede grounds, forever within range of the horses that shaped his life and Alberta’s history.


http://www.cowboycountrytv.com/trail.../johnware.html

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[Red Bullets]

Did you ever wonder how the local pioneer settlers got their beer in 1910? You waited until the teamsters rolled in from the Bohemian Maid Brewery with kegs to sell.
In 1910 the Bohemian Maid Brewery made 3200 gallons of beer per brew. The teamsters would drive the kegs to the various towns and probably stop at prominent farmers homes too. I wonder what that beer was like after it went down 50 miles of bumpy roads?

[Red Bullets]

The first steamboat on Pigeon lake was the Countess. This steamer hauled log booms across the lake to a Mulhurst saw mill.

The Countess was owned by the Rowley Lumber co.. Rowley also had another steamer called The Myrtle. Picture was taken 105 years ago in 1911.

[Red Bullets]

Still sort of local to Edmonton this was a logging camp at Wizard lake early in the 1900's. It was on the south shore half way down the lake. There were lumber camps at most lakes with timber around them. Logs were milled locally for use or run down the creeks and rivers to bigger centers like mentioned in a previous post.

There were also a few coal mines at Wizard lake too. Some shafts went underground quite a ways. There was a mine where Jubilee park is and a few other mines on both sides of the lake. All of the shafts have been sealed off so don't think a person could find one today.

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Originally Posted by Red Bullets

Did you ever wonder how the local pioneer settlers got their beer in 1910? You waited until the teamsters rolled in from the Bohemian Maid Brewery with kegs to sell.
In 1910 the Bohemian Maid Brewery made 3200 gallons of beer per brew. The teamsters would drive the kegs to the various towns and probably stop at prominent farmers homes too. I wonder what that beer was like after it went down 50 miles of bumpy roads?

Cool !!!

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[Red Bullets]

Love the old pictures BB. Post a few words about the pictures if you know the history of them. Would love to know more about the wagon train picture.

I know the rig picture in post 338 says Dingman .I believe the Dingman was the discovery well in the Turner Valley. The start of oilfields in Alberta.

May 14, 1914 the Dingman flowed with a gasoline-like liquid that the Calgary newspaper declared “the most remarkable discovery in the history of the world.” (It was in Western Canada anyways. Canada's first oil was discovered in SW Ontario in 1858 and in 1859 in the USA.)

This discovery in Turner Valley and the southern oilfield is the reason most oil companies in Alberta started and still base their head offices in Calgary. A few days after the discovery, thousands of Calgarians withdrew almost $500,000 from the banks to buy into nearly 500 mostly new oil companies. Because of the boom and investing interest oil went to 9 dollars a barrel which is about 180 dollars in today's dollar.

Footnote tidbit:
The discovery of how to turn crude oil into kerosene for lamps in 1852 intensified the search for oil in North America.

[bb356]

Originally Posted by Red Bullets

Love the old pictures BB. Post a few words about the pictures if you know the history of them. Would love to know more about the wagon train picture.

I know the rig picture in post 338 says Dingman .I believe the Dingman was the discovery well in the Turner Valley. The start of oilfields in Alberta.

May 14, 1914 the Dingman flowed with a gasoline-like liquid that the Calgary newspaper declared “the most remarkable discovery in the history of the world.” (It was in Western Canada anyways. Canada's first oil was discovered in SW Ontario in 1858 and in 1859 in the USA.)

This discovery in Turner Valley and the southern oilfield is the reason most oil companies in Alberta started and still base their head offices in Calgary. A few days after the discovery, thousands of Calgarians withdrew almost $500,000 from the banks to buy into nearly 500 mostly new oil companies. Because of the boom and investing interest oil went to 9 dollars a barrel which is about 180 dollars in today's dollar.

Footnote tidbit:
The discovery of how to turn crude oil into kerosene for lamps in 1852 intensified the search for oil in North America.

Wagon train pic is north of Edmonton on the Athabasca Landing Trail

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Rocky Mountain Ranger's ... Medicine Hat ... 1885

[Red Bullets]

Not sure if I mentioned this before...

In 1850 a FN elder came into Rocky Mountain House to trade. He traded for gun powder but did not get any lead balls. When the fort factor asked him if he needed any balls he replied," No. I prefer using balls I made myself. They are much heavier." He showed the trader his musket balls. They were made of solid gold.

FN had found gold along the foot of the mountains up to the size of the end of a finger. The Chief factor at Ft. Edmonton, John Rowand, sent some of this gold east to be checked out. It was pure gold. The factors of the various forts were instructed to tell FN to keep the matter secret for fear that something terrible would happen to them.

[Red Bullets]

As early as 1918 there were concerns about the fisheries in Southern Alberta due to fishing pressures. In 1921 Fish creek, Bragg creek and all creeks entering the Bow River from the north side were closed. Throughout the 1920's there was a great debate about how long streams should remain closed.
By 1927 the feeder streams of the Oldman, Crowsnest and Waterton rivers were closed indefintely. 18 streams in all.

The influx of 'angling tourists' on the new roads fishing every stream or river they crossed in their autos on the new roads destroyed the fishery. And the angling tourist came on the train too.

On one single Sunday afternoon in 1926 the High River F&G assoc. counted 300 cars of anglers passing the first rancher's gate west of town.

[Red Bullets]

They say history repeats itself... And we think we got it bad..

By 1914 The new city of Red Deer was on the verge of bankruptcy from an economic downturn. The population in 1911 was 2118 and only grew by 210 people in ten years. Even the bank wouldn't give credit to the city by 1916.

And to top it all off Red Deer was the main recruiting center for central Alberta during WW1 and lost much of it's labour force to enlistment. In 1915 a flood damaged the railway, lumbermill and powerplant and washed away roads too.

[Red Bullets]

In the early 1920's there was a beautiful brook trout caught that was the talk of central Alberta. 12 lb and a few ounces. Caught at Burntstick lake.

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I think Cat took this pic when he just hit middle age

[260 Rem]

The first of my relatives that arrived in Alberta (Frank and Charlie Houcher) drove 26 head of cattle up from the the US about 1896 ... had to leave them at the border for 3 months due to quarantine requirements. Tried a homestead in the Wetaskiwin area, then about '98 moved on to the Neutral Hills area where they eventually got into ranching on a large scale. By the mid 1940's they were running over 600 head of cattle.

[Red Bullets]

Back in the ealrly days of settlement there is a story about a bear hunt gone bad. Two men were out hunting in the foothills and encountered a big grizzly. When the one man shot at the bear the gun did not go off. The bear came at the man and was right in front of him ...and when the bear opened his mouth the man's gun did work and he shot the bear through the roof of its mouth.
Unfortunately when the bullet exited the bears mouth it hit the second man killing him. The bear and the second man fell over dead.

[Red Bullets]

Between 1600 and the late 1700's there were 20000 trade muskets sold in 'canadian territory.' In the very early 1800's the standard gun was the 1805 Barnett flintlock trade musket.

[Red Bullets]

In earlier posts it was mentioned how the buffalo bones were collected and sent east. This picture really shows how the prairies looked before the bones were picked up.

Photo credit: Alberta archives.

[Red Bullets]

Today we will think nothing of driving 100 miles to go hunting for a day trip. Not that long ago it took time and preparation to go hunting.
This was a hunting camp in 1922 in the Glory Hills north of Stony Plain. It took the men a day just to get the 20 or so miles from Edmonton on horseback. I could not find the follow up picture but within a couple days they had 6 deer hanging in camp.

The men on the hunt were Charlie MacLaughlin, his dad and the Hubble brothers. I think that Hubbles lake was named after this family.