#central alberta

Bower Ponds, Red Deer (No. 3)

Leonard Gaetz gave a half-share of 1,240 acres (5.0 km2) he had acquired to the Calgary and Edmonton Railway to develop a bridge over the river and a townsite. As a result, the Crossing was gradually abandoned. The first trains arrived in 1891.

Following World War I, Red Deer emerged as a small, quiet, but prosperous, prairie city.

Bird watcher Elsie Cassels helped to establish the Gaetz Lakes bird sanctuary.

During Great Depression of the 1930s, Central Alberta was not hit by severe drought. The city was virtually debt-free and profited from its ownership of the local public utilities.

In World War II, a large army training camp was located where Cormack Armoury, the Memorial Centre and Lindsay Thurber High School are now. Two training airfields were built south of the city at Penhold and Bowden.

Red Deer expanded rapidly following the discovery of major oil reserves in Alberta in the late 1940s. Red Deer became a centre for oil and gas and related industries, such as the Joffre Cogeneration Plant.

North Red Deer was amalgamated in 1948.

Government and administrative services include a hospital, a courthouse and a provincial building.

The railway moved to the outskirts and passenger train service ceased. The CPR bridge is now a walking trail.

Red Deer is Alberta's third largest city, with a slightly higher population than Lethbridge.

Moodboard for Central Alberta

While waiting for the super moon to crest earlier this week, I ran into a whole herd of deer just east of the City of Red Deer limits, north of Hwy 11. The same field had hundreds of geese, and the ones further back started to suddenly fly off but I couldn’t see why, until I went driving towards the other end.

There was a thick line of trees, so I had to shoot through them to even get part of the group, but there was probably at least 20 of them if not more - which is the most deer I’ve ever seen in one place. Whoever owns the land has “no hunting” signs in place, so I wonder if they always hang out in the area because they know it’s safe, or if it’s a sign of how quickly nature starts to reclaim its territory with people staying inside.

Bower Ponds, Red Deer (No. 2)

The area was inhabited by First Nations including the Blackfoot, Plains Cree and Stoney before the arrival of European fur traders in the late eighteenth century. A First Nations trail ran from the Montana Territory across the Bow River near present-day Calgary and on to Fort Edmonton, later known as the Calgary and Edmonton Trail. The trail crossed the Red Deer River at a wide, stony shallows. The "Old Red Deer Crossing" is 7 kilometres (4.3 mi) upstream from the present-day city.

Cree people called the river Waskasoo Seepee, which means "Elk River." European arrivals sometimes called North American elk "red deer," after the related Eurasian species, and later named the community after the river. The name for the modern city in Plains Cree is a calque of the English name (mihkwâpisimosos, literally "red type of deer"), while the name of the river itself is still wâwâskêsiw-sîpiy or "elk river."

First Nations on the north side of the river entered into Treaty 6 in 1876 and on the south side Treaty 7 in 1877. Farmers and ranchers began to settle on the fertile lands.

A trading post and stopping house were built at the Crossing in 1882. This became Fort Normandeau during the 1885 North-West Rebellion.