Top Qs
Timeline
Chat
Perspective

Timeline of Edmonton history

Chronology of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Remove ads

The timeline of Edmonton history is a chronology of significant events in the history of Edmonton, Alberta.

Pre-European period

  • Indigenous peoples roamed Alberta for thousands of years, or even tens of thousands of years. The rim of the river valley and its ravines and hilltops in Edmonton are known to have been well-used as campgrounds and look-out points during this time. Rabbit Hill, today's Mary Lobay Park, Mount Pleasant Cemetery and Huntington Heights (near Whitemud Drive west of Calgary Trail) are known to be sites of human activity for millennia.[citation needed] As well, the "Old North Trail" of the Blackfoot goes through present-day Edmonton, as it goes from Mexico to the Barren Lands up north. (Part of it survives is preserved as the Great Western Trail through the U.S.) At about Edmonton the Trail branched, with one branch going through present-day site of Ft. Assiniboine and toward western Arctic lands; the other branch going NE then breaking north to descend the Athabasca River. Some conjecture that the Trail's crossing of the North Saskatchewan River at the site is the reason for the siting of fur-trade posts in Rossdale.[1][2][3]
Remove ads

18th century

19th century

  • 1802 - Fort Edmonton (Hudson's Bay Company) moved to Rossdale.
  • 1810 - Fort Edmonton (Hudson's Bay Company) moved to near Smoky Lake.
  • 1812 – Fort Edmonton (Hudson's Bay Company) moved to Rossdale, never again to move out of today's Edmonton. This was start of Edmonton's recorded permanent occupancy.[6]
  • 1821 the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company merged, and fur-trade activities at Edmonton became concentrated in Fort Edmonton.
  • 1830 – Fort Edmonton moved up the hill, to near today's legislative building. From 1830 to 1860, the fur trade in western Canda used Edmonton as a prominent trasnshipment point connecting the prairies with New Caledonia (interior BC) and with the fur trading posts up north. By 1860s ships were sailing from the Atlantic Ocean "around the Horn" to the west coast, and that more and more caused a decline in the importance of Edmonton as a transportation link.[7]
  • 1859-1860 - Gold rush in the Cariboo region of BC leads to gold-panners coming to Edmonton. Among them Thomas Clover, of Clover Bar. (Later dredges are used to mine gold from river bed.)[8][9]
  • 1870 – Fort Edmonton and environs becomes part of Canada and of the North-West Territories .
  • 1871 – The first prominent buildings outside the walls of Fort Edmonton, a Methodist church mission building and manse, built by George McDougall and his family. They added mix to the existing campsites and log cabins of gold prospectors, frontier farmers and hunters, Indigenous, European and Métis, who lived in the bush where City of Edmonton sits today.
  • 1874 - North-West Mounted Police arrive. Second Patrol, a spin-off of the main March West, arrived in exhausted dribs and drabs Oct. 29-Nov. 2
  • 1876 – Treaty 6 is signed by representatives of the Queen and local Native leaders. Title to the Fort Edmonton region is ceded to the Crown, excepting promised Indian reserves, Enoch and Papaschase. (The Papaschase reserve, on the site of Mill Woods, was never established.)[10]
  • 1879 – Edmonton's first local exhibition.
  • 1880 – Edmonton Bulletin published. Frank Oliver, publisher
  • 1882 - As new arrivals try to take up residence in Edmonton area where people are already living, a violent struggle arises between "old timers" and the new "squatters". Matthew McCauley is named to head a settlers rights protective association. He and others throw a squatter's shack over the edge of the river valley.[11]
  • 1882 – Dominion Land Survey done in Edmonton area. Mixture of riverlots along river and square sections elsewhere. It helped firm up local land ownership.
  • 1883 - Edmonton, at the time an unincorporated hamlet, elected Frank Oliver as its first representative to the NWT Territorial Council.
  • 1886 – Edmonton's coldest temperature is recorded as −49.4 °C (−56.9 °F) January 19.[12]
  • 1891 - Calgary and Edmonton Railway was completed from Calgary to the south bank of North Saskatchewan River, across from the Edmonton settlement.
  • 1891 – Community of South Edmonton (Strathcona) was established south of the river at the end of steel of the Calgary and Edmonton Railway. (Became a town in 1899.)[13]
  • 1892
    • Edmonton incorporated as a town with a population of 700. Covered what is now downtown, north of the river.[14][15]
    • Edmonton's first town election. Matt McCauley elected mayor.
    • Rat Creek Rebellion - Mayor McCauley and an armed mob prevented transfer of Dominion land office to "South Edmonton" (Strathcona). When tempers cooled, a separate land office was established in South Edmonton. Edmonton hired its first constable. [16]
    • Second McDougall Church is built at site of first church. (Now at Fort Edmonton Park)
    • 1894 - Edmonton Police force founded.
  • 1896 - Edmonton pioneer, newspaperman and NWT Council member Frank Oliver elected as MP for Alberta.[17]
  • 1897 – Edmonton was a starting point for people making the trek overland to the Klondike Gold Rush. Nearby South Edmonton (Strathcona) was the northernmost railway point on the western Prairies. (But Edmonton was still about 3000 kilometres from the goldfields.)
  • 1899 - South Edmonton, south of the river, became Town of Strathcona.[18]
Remove ads

Early 20th century

Thumb
Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) arrived in Edmonton in 1905.
  • 1900 – Low Level Bridge completed.
  • 1903
    • Edmonton Journal founded.
    • Methodist Church Board founds Alberta College
    • Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific Railway is built on the Low Level Bridge to connect Rossdale Station in Edmonton on the north side of the river by rail to Strathcona and thence to the outside world. In 1906 railway line is extended from Rossdale west to 124 Street and up out of the river valley, then back east along 104 Avenue to downtown Edmonton.
  • 1904
  • 1905
  • 1907-13 – real estate and construction boom. With amalgamation of the cities of Strathcona and Edmonton, the population of Edmonton grew to 72,500.[14]
  • 1907 – Six miners die in a fire at the Strathcona Coal Company, near south end of today's High Level Bridge, the worst industrial accident Edmonton has suffered
  • 1908
  • 1909
  • 1910 – Third McDougall Church, the brick one standing today, completed, dedicated in honour of George McDougall.
  • 1911 – Connaught Armoury built in Strathcona.
  • 1912
  • 1913
    • Alberta Legislature Building completed.
    • High Level Bridge opened. It carried a CPR rail-line and streetcar lines as well as a two-lane road for private vehicles (both horse-drawn and gas-fueled) and sidewalks for pedestrians.
    • Robertson-Wesley United Church completed.
    • Edmonton economy collapses. With completion of Legislative Building and High Level Bridge, unemployment became problem. Land in the Hudson's Bay Co reserve was put on the market and sold, with the money raised by the sales going to HBC headquarters out of the province. British investment dried up as Europe invested in military preparation for the coming war. This all caused real estate prices to drop. With the start of World War I, the city's population declined, going from 72,000 in 1914 to under 54,000 in only two years, people leaving to eke out existence on farms, or off to war, or to other centres.[14]
Thumb
The Hotel Macdonald in downtown Edmonton
  • 1914
    • Vote held on street naming system (following amalgamation of Strathcona and Edmonton, each with their own systems) Numerical numbering (centred on Jasper Avenue and 101 Street) got 2099 votes; "Edmonscona" scheme (a mixed number-name system) got 1471 votes.[23]
  • 1915
  • 1917 – Edmonton annexes village of West Edmonton (Calder).
  • 1918–1919 – Spanish Flu pandemic kills 614 Edmontonians.
  • 1920 – Edmonton Symphony Orchestra holds its first performance.
  • 1921 - first woman elected to the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton - Liberal Nellie McClung
  • 1922
    • CJCA begins broadcasting as city's first radio station.
    • Edmonton Grads win the Canadian Basketball Championship. The team wins this competition each year from 1922 to 1940.
    • - Edmonton Eskimos football team, owned by local Elks society, took the name Edmonton Elks in October 1922. At first known as the Edmonton Rugby Foot-ball Club, the team had taken the name Eskimos. By 1922 that name was thought to be inappropriate to the team as it "did not connote any qualities desired in football players" and "it begot a false notion of the geographical position of Edmonton." The team disbanded during WWII. (see 1954) (Today's Edmonton Elks have taken the team's old name).[24][25][26]
  • 1923
  • 1924 – The Edmonton Art Gallery opened for the first time.
  • 1926 – Edmonton elected its first "third-party" MLAs - UFA's John Lymburn and Labour's Lionel Gibbs. Use of proportional representation likely helped make this possible.
  • 1929 – Blatchford Field (now Edmonton City Centre (Blatchford Field) Airport) commenced operation.[28]
  • 1930
  • 1932 – Edmonton Hunger March in December. A demonstration by struggling workers and farmers is repressed by billyclub-wielding police, some on horseback. Subsequently, police raid the Hunger March headquarters. 27 arrested.[29][30]
  • 1935 – Edmonton elected its first Social Credit MLAs.
  • 1937 – Edmonton's hottest temperature (until 1998) is recorded as 37.2 °C on June 29.
  • 1938
Remove ads

Later 20th century, after discovery of oil at Leduc

Thumb
The path taken by the F4 Edmonton tornado in 1987. The F numbers are for the Fujita values, the O is for Imperial Oil Strathcona and Petro-Canada refineries, P is the Edmonton Power Clover power station and C is for the Celanese Canada chemical plant.
Remove ads

21st century

Remove ads

See also

References

Loading related searches...

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.

Remove ads
Remove ads