Preserving Strathmore’s history

Times Reporter

 

A newly established museum committee is hoping to get things moving to create the Strathmore Museum.

Most of Strathmore’s history and artifacts have been lost over the years, but Lynn Fair, a member of the committee, said they want to preserve as much as they can now for future generations.

“We realize establishing a museum is a complex task, but we’re starting by organizing bylaws, forming a society and creating a foundation to begin the formal process,” said Fair. 

“Our long term vision is for the museum to be a tourism benefit, not only for the town, but for all the residents of Wheatland County as a whole.”

In 1984, the Klaibers created a plan for an extensive heritage park, which was based on the CPR farm that had existed on both the north and south sides of the highway. The timing was just not right, but Bruce Klaiber, who is also a museum committee member, shared the original plan with the committee.

Strathmore has a rich history, but how many people know that it once had Canada’s largest milk factory?

In 1903, the CPR was granted 1,200,000 hectares of land in central and southern Alberta and in return, the CPR had to colonize the land and was responsible for the irrigation system to service it. 

In 1906, the section around Strathmore was completed. Because the CPR had a tough time getting potential settlers along the irrigated land, they began building agricultural demonstration farms like the one that was in Strathmore. There were only 12 other demonstration farms in Western Canada.

The rewards were huge to CPR – they would be able to sell the land to settlers and the railroad would be there to help export products from the agriculture industry. The irrigation district headquarters was also in Strathmore, established in 1911.

The farm was officially ready in 1908, consisting of 400 hectares of irrigated land. The farm had greenhouses, garden silos and cattle barns. It provided food and dairy, to the railway passengers and supplied the CPR hotels.  

As settlers moved into the area, the scope of the demonstration farm changed, from a demonstration and supply farm, to just supply farm. 

There were also once apricots, pear, apple, crabapple and plum trees, which were planted by Augustus Griffen in 1935. The poultry farm portion housed 4,000 birds and hatched 10,000 chicks. 

Over time the benefits of the irrigation system began to diminish and in 1943 CPR decided to dispose of the irrigation district, the supply farm, livestock and land. Since then the town has been built up in all directions around the former farm, and now all that remains is one of the original buildings.

Bruce Klaiber owns that building. The plan to reestablish the farm began in the ‘80s.  It flourished and then died, and then in 1996 because of the dilapidated state of the buildings, Klaiber had them torn down, with the exception of the one that still remains. 

Abe Fehr Contracting was hired to restore the building, which is now in excellent condition and could be used to house the main part of the museum. 

There are not a lot of historic buildings left in Strathmore and Fair said it would be nice if the remaining ones could become part of a re-created, old-fashioned main street or built into a larger tourist attraction in the future.

“The goal is grab onto some of our history before we lose it completely, and this being one of the surviving buildings, it’s a great place to start… this is the centre point,” said Grant Klaiber.

Last year the committee had spent some time trying to find a location when Bruce mentioned his barn. 

“We were just fortunate that Bruce is on the committee and this came to light. I think it’s very interesting that 30 years later it can be brought up again and maybe the time’s right,” said Fair.

It is unfortunate that a lot of the town’s history was lost over the 30 years since the original Strathmore Park plan, but Fair is confident if the committee gets started now, they will have it available for future generations so that nothing else is lost. 

“If we start generating interest, somebody that would be in an older generation than us could say we have all this stuff and nobody in the family wants it. It could start being stored and going towards a future museum. We hope to capture a few things before they disappear by just letting people know there is a future to the museum,” said Fair. 

“I’ve always thought it was a great idea and it’s a matter of getting people motivated. It is a monumental task because when we started this project 30 years ago, we started realizing that you start out with this little idea and then all of a sudden these ideas come flying in and away it goes,” said Grant Klaiber.

A SeaCan has been donated to collect any antiques people wish to donate to the museum as they move along the process of establishing a society and a foundation.