Oil pump near Leduc
Travel Alberta
Forty thousand years ago Alberta existed as swamp land where dinosaurs roamed. The glaciers began retreating around 11,000 BC, creating habitable land along the Rockies for the First Nations people. The climate began to change, creating grasslands and the first signs of modern vegetation. Animals such as antelope and smaller species of bison began to flourish. First Nations people began settling on the plains to hunt. In southern Alberta, the Blackfoot, Blood and Piegan tribes hunted buffalo. Woodland Cree and Chipewyan hunted caribou and moose as well as relying on fishing in central Alberta.
The first half of the 1700s marked a time of indirect contact among the First Nations (Cree and Assiniboine), the newly formed Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and the French traders of the St. Lawrence. The Hudson's Bay Company was granted exclusive rights to Rupert's Land, by King Charles II of Britain, through the Royal Charter of 1670.
Anthony Henday, a fur trader for HBC, was the first recorded European to reach Alberta in 1754 or 1755. By the 1790s, David Thompson, a surveyor for the newly established North West Company (NWC), had drawn the first set of reliable maps of Alberta. The NWC established the first European settlement on the shore of Lake Athabasca, called Fort Chipewyan. Vying for supremacy, the HBC and the NWC built a series of fortified outposts: Fort George on the Saskatchewan River in 1792, Fort Edmonton in 1795, and Rocky Mountain House in 1799. Many forts still exist as heritage sites.
The number of private traders now increased, and this competition resulted in financial difficulties for both the NWC and HBC. In 1820,representatives of both companies met to find a solution. The meeting resulted in a merger in 1821 and put an end to the long-standing rivalry. The merger also created a monopoly over the Canadian fur trade. To discourage private trading, the HBC charged four Métis men from Red River with illegal trading, based on the Charter of 1670. Pierre Geullaume Sayer was the first to face trial. The jury found him guilty but a punishment was not given. The charges against the other men were dropped, marking an end to the HBC trade monopoly.
In 1869, the legal rights to the northern areas of Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, British Columbia, Yukon and the North West Territories were transferred by Britain to the Canadian government. The Northwest was open for settlement by 1872, and the Canadian government put policies into place to encourage immigration.
The North-West Mounted Police were formed in 1873 to maintain order after an American party massacred a band of Assiniboines. The Mounties faces a number of challenges shortly after formation. American traders set up a post to sell whisky to First Nations people, who at the same time were witnessing the rapid decline of their key source of food, because traders were killing a large numbers of buffalo for skins. On top of that, thousands of First Nations people were dying from diseases brought by Europeans. The Mounties supervised treaties between the Canadian Government and the First Nations, outlining reserve lands and food provisions. The first North-West Mounted Police post was established at Fort MacLeod in 1874.
One of the most important events in Alberta's history was the Canadian government's decision to connect Eastern and Western Canada by means of the Canadian Pacific Railroad in 1880. By 1883, the railroad reached the Alberta border, making greater settlement possible. The railroad also made it possible to survey the entire prairie region by 1889.
The majority of early settlers came from Ontario, Britain and the U.S. Mormons from Utah, accustomed to the dry conditions, contributed the first irrigation system to Alberta in 1887. Clifford Sifton, Canada's minister to the Interior, began an advertising campaign in Europe to entice settlers. The campaign brought many people of German, Ukrainian and Romanian descent.
Alberta became the eighth province of Canada in 1905, and the first government held court the following year.
In the early 1900s, Alberta's economy was based primarily on agriculture, coal and forest products, but that was about to change. In 1914, a miner named W.S. Heron noticed an oil seepage on a farm in Turner Valley; he acquired the land and mining rights to start drilling, and struck oil in May of that year. More oil discoveries were made at Leduc in 1947, and at Woodbend and Redwater in 1949. Further bolstering the Alberta economy, the 1950s and '60s saw the building of pipelines to carry natural gas and other abundant resources to other provinces and countries.
by Michelle Brown