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Glenbow Archives
NA-303-155
When this photowas taken
of Elevator Row in 1906, the young, bus-
tling, central-Alberta town of Wetaskiwin
had just reached 1,600 people. The board
of trade included this photo in a promo-
tional booklet describing Wetaskiwin as
“The Elevator City of Alberta.” While the
photo shows five, the new city actually
had six grain elevators with capacity for
250,000 bushels at the time, able to hold
the bountiful harvest from the 65,000
acres of cultivated land in the district.
A grain company called Brackman-Ker
built the first elevator in Alberta in near-
by Strathcona in 1895.
As Canadian Pacific Railway lines and
cultivated farm land expanded, by 1912
there were 279 elevators in the province,
operated by 72 grain companies and
organizations. The Wetaskiwin district
was promoted as a prime agricultural
area: “The soil is rich and black loam
with an average depth of two feet. The
rainy season occurs in June and July,
AGAINST
THE GRAIN
leaving the remainder of the year free to
do all classes of outdoor work, and even
if the rainy season is short, no damage
can possibly come to the crops as there is
sufficient moisture to mature any crop.
Wheat, oats and barley … grow in abun-
dance. It is not uncommon to find yields
of wheat running as high as 55 bushels to
the acre and oats as high as 110.” From a
peak of 1,755 Alberta elevators in 1934,
today there are 88 with a total capacity of
1.9 million tonnes.
ElevatorMusic
Spring
2014
Grains
West
50