Echoes of footsteps previous: The actual story behind Alberta ghost cities

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Creator, photojournalist and former Calgary Herald journalist David Bly wrote and photographed the historic content material about ghost cities, republished beneath, initially in September 2005. Whereas the points of interest and inhabitants numbers in these locations have fluctuated since then, they nonetheless retain a sentimental attraction for a lot of.

Ghost Cities: The urbanization of Alberta has left the agricultural panorama dotted with communities that progress has handed by

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By David Bly

There was a time when small-town life outlined Alberta, when most Albertans lived in or round communities the place they knew their neighbours, the place the group provided social, bodily and religious wants.

But a lot of these cities now not exist, or have dwindled virtually to nothing, victims of local weather, economics and progress that introduced fast entry to bigger centres and depopulated rural areas.

Just like the cussed caragana bushes that also develop round deserted homesteads, some communities live on, and even develop slightly, as individuals uncover the peace and neighbourliness of locations that metropolis dwellers would possibly see as impossibly small.

However it may be a melancholy journey driving previous the ghosts of lifeless desires, of deserted locations that have been as soon as referred to as residence.

Right here’s a glimpse of 4 locations that many individuals have forgotten, however some nonetheless cherish.

ROWLEY

Inhabitants: 6

Progress handed Rowley by, leaving it previously. And that’s its future. Its practice station remains to be intact. It has three elevators standing in a row. Its streets and homes have modified little in two or three generations, making it a perfect spot to make interval motion pictures.

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That’s what Anne Wheeler thought when she used Rowley as a set for Bye Bye Blues, a movie a couple of younger Canadian lady dealing with a alternative between a singing profession and loyalty to her husband, who’s in Europe preventing the battle.

Extra just lately, this group 25 kilometres north of Drumheller posed as rural Colorado in The Magic of Extraordinary Days, a Hallmark film a couple of pregnant metropolis lady despatched by her father into a wedding with a farmer who shouldn’t be the daddy of her youngster.

The film, which garnered optimistic critiques, stars Keri Russell.

A number of commercials have been shot right here and extra are more likely to come, says Doug Hampton, the group affiliation president and the closest factor Rowley has to a mayor.

Hampton was raised on a farm a few kilometres from city, and moved right here round 1980.

“I’ll most likely die right here,” he says. “It’s a peaceable place. No visitors, besides in the summertime, when the vacationers come by way of.”

One carload of travellers can double the city’s inhabitants, he says.

The group affiliation owns and maintains a lot of the buildings within the city, together with the grain elevators.

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It’s an enormous problem to take care of the elevators, says Hampton.

“They want new roofs and a paint job,” he says. “It takes some huge cash to repair these suckers up.”

Sustaining a city as a dwelling museum wouldn’t be potential with out the volunteers, he says, individuals who dwell on farms within the surrounding space and within the close by communities of Morrin and Rumsey.

The group comes collectively the final Saturday of every month for pizza night time within the saloon.

Need to lease a city on your subsequent social gathering?

“Yeah, we are able to do this,” says Hampton. “We’ll repair the meals and all the things.”

Rowley by no means had greater than a few hundred individuals at its peak, says Hampton’s sister-in-law, Lucille. But it surely nonetheless serves as a centre for the realm — she runs the put up workplace, which has 16 box-holders.

WAYNE

Inhabitants: 31

“Welcome to Wayne,” says the signal. “Inhabitants: then 2,490, now 42.”

That’s an exaggeration, says Fred Dayman, proprietor and operator of the Rosedeer Resort (est. 1913) and its adjoining Final Probability Saloon. “It’s extra like 31.”

At one time, Wayne was larger than Drumheller, its inhabitants employed by the ten coal mines that operated within the space. When coal’s reign ended, the city was all however deserted, a few of its buildings moved, others left empty. “We had our alternative of playhouses,” says Dayman, who was born and raised in Wayne.

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Twenty-two years in the past, he purchased the lodge and saloon from his mom, and hasn’t been shy about exploiting the city’s Wild West look. The saloon’s decor is made up of each western cliche you may consider, and is simply downright enjoyable.

The burgers are sizzling, enormous and hearty and the beer is available in quart sealers, for those who’re so inclined.

Wayne, although a fraction of its former measurement, is way from lifeless. It bustles in the summertime as vacationers come to soak within the historic ambiance and the scenic valley of the Rosebud River.

On the second weekend in July, the city’s inhabitants grows to 4,000 as bikers roar in for a Harley-Davidson rally. And in September, guests flock to Wayne for the annual music competition: nation, bluegrass, “slightly little bit of all the things,” says Dayman.

DOROTHY

Inhabitants: 13

Ray and Betty Faubion received some teasing after they retired from farming and moved to city.

“Once we have been planning to maneuver, one buddy stated Ray had been working within the solar an excessive amount of,” stated Betty.

They might have gone one other half hour up the highway and lived in Drumheller, which has all of the facilities anybody would want.

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However they selected Dorothy, with its handful of homes, two derelict church buildings and an deserted elevator sitting alongside the Pink Deer River.

“It’s lovely right here,” says Betty.

“We will see all the things up and down the valley. We will hear the birds . . . the meadowlarks, the goldfinches.”

“And the taxes are $400 a yr,” says Ray.

They haul water to irrigate their yard, however their potable water comes from a spring, courtesy of a neighbour.

“Once we moved in, he hooked us as much as the water. Did all the things; wouldn’t take something for it,” says Ray. “He says we might do one thing for him someday. That’s the best way it’s right here.”

At its peak, Dorothy had about 150 residents, three elevators, three shops and three gasoline stations.

It loved a quick interval of worldwide fame when the Toronto Star revealed a narrative by Richard Harrington in 1951 about all of the lonely rancher bachelors of Dinosaur Valley.

The story was picked up by Parade journal in New York, and by European publications. The small Dorothy put up workplace was flooded with playing cards and letters from keen girls, and the postmistress handed them out to any male who was remotely .

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Parade journal even flew in one of many letter writers, Rose Brewer of Chicago, to fulfill Tom Hodgson, one of many bachelors, hoping to money in on a narrative of a giant metropolis woman falling in love with an Alberta rancher.

“She stayed with me,” says Blanche Hodgson, 87, Tom’s sister-in-law. “She was a really good woman, a really respectable woman, however she had no notion of coming right here to get married. She seemingly got here for the journey.”

A friendship of types developed with Tom, however not a romance. Rose returned to Chicago and married her boyfriend there.

Though a few of the bachelors later married, not one marriage resulted from the 1000’s of letters that poured in. Tom Hodgson, who has since died, by no means married.

“It put Dorothy on the map, and it was loads of enjoyable,” says Blanche. “We nonetheless chortle about it.”

ALDERSON

Inhabitants: 0

When historian David Jones needed to inform the story of the ill-fated settlement of Alberta’s dry southeast nook, he targeted on Alderson, west of Drugs Hat, alongside Previous Freeway 1.

Surveyed by the CPR in 1910, the city, then referred to as Carlstadt, grew rapidly. (The title was modified through the First World Struggle as a result of individuals thought Carlstadt sounded too Germanic.)

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By 1913, its companies included two normal shops, three lumber firms, three insurance coverage and actual property workplaces, two implement sellers, two {hardware} shops, two pool halls, two church buildings, a drugstore, a meat market, a bakery, a Union Financial institution, a two-room college and 5 resorts.

However that was its peak. Because the First World Struggle raged, Alderson started to dwindle, a sufferer of drought, fires and the harsh actuality that the prairie might assist solely so many individuals. By the early Twenties, the general public and companies have been gone.

In the present day, one small shack is the one constructing left standing amid the crumbling foundations.

Within the spartan cemetery 100 metres to the east, the leaning tombstones of a dozen graves stand as monuments to a misplaced lifestyle.

“Alberta is so urbanized with two main centres dominating,” says Jones. “You ask individuals the place these cities are, they usually don’t know.

“It’s the old-timers, the oldsters on their approach to heaven, who do not forget that lifestyle.”

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