Winnifred, Alberta facts for kids

Winnifred is a small community called a hamlet in Alberta, Canada. It is part of the County of Forty Mile No. 8. Winnifred is about 50 kilometers (31 miles) southwest of the city of Medicine Hat. It is also about 14 kilometers (9 miles) east of the town of Bow Island.

The Story of Winnifred: A Look at Its Past

Winnifred started as a simple stop on a railway line in 1885. This stop was called a whistle stop and was located at "Mile 31" on the Dunmore Junction railway, also known as the Turkey Track. It was later named Winnifred after the daughter of J.R. Whitlaw, who was one of the first members of the Turkey Track railway.

Early Days: First Buildings and Settlers

In 1903, Winnifred was very small. It only had a few buildings:

• A section house where William Savage lived.
• A dugout, which was a simple shelter built into the ground, for the railway workers.
• A small two-room building that served as the telegraph office.

At this time, fewer than ten people lived in the area around Winnifred.

Four years later, in 1907, the Alberta Government opened up the land between Grassy Lake and Winnifred for homesteading. This meant people could claim land to build farms and homes.

Many Settlers came to Winnifred from Eastern Canada and the central United States. They quickly claimed almost all the land for miles around. However, they did not know that the area often suffered from droughts, meaning it did not get much rain. Because there was little water or wood, settlers had to dig wells for water and find small coal deposits for heating their homes.

Growing Pains: First Businesses and a Boom

The first businesses in Winnifred opened in 1908 and early 1909:

• P.J. Demarce opened a store on the south side of the railway tracks.
• William Hickmore brought lumber from Lethbridge to build a hotel and a place to eat.
• J.S Fisher, from Whitefish, Montana, opened the Fisher Mercantile, which was a general store.

By 1913, many businesses grew and moved to the other side of the tracks. They were joined by F.W. Brown's Hardware store and Quong Chon's laundry and café. A new, modern hotel was also built by the Fritz Sick brewery from Lethbridge.

Winnifred's best years were 1915 and 1916. There was a lot of rain, which led to huge harvests, called bumper crops. But this good time did not last.

Challenges and Decline: The Tough Years

In 1918, the Fisher Mercantile store went out of business. This was when the first of many homesteaders started to leave Winnifred. The hotel also closed that same year and was moved to Brooks. The Winnifred Record, a local newspaper that had started to report on the community's growth, also stopped publishing soon after.

The 1920s were very hard for the people who stayed in Winnifred. There were more droughts, huge clouds of grasshoppers, and then many rabbits. These animals ate almost all the grain crops. More settlers packed up and left. The government even helped some families move to new homesteads in central and Northern Alberta.

By the mid-1930s, severe dust storms made things even worse. Many farms were left empty. It took about thirty years for the remaining homesteaders to understand that without irrigation (bringing water to the land), the area was best for ranching animals, not growing crops.

Modern changes also led to Winnifred's decline. Schools were combined into larger ones, a process called School consolidation. Also, Highway 3 was rerouted, which meant fewer people passed through Winnifred. These changes caused even more people to move to bigger towns like Lethbridge and Medicine Hat. The few businesses that were left, like the Turtle Café, closed in the early 1960s. Winnifred became almost a ghost town, with only the grain elevators and their workers remaining. Eventually, even these were torn down. Not much of Winnifred's long history is left today, just memories and old photos.

Winnifred Today: A New Beginning

Today, something new is happening in Winnifred. Young families are starting to move back to the hamlet. In a way, they are helping to repopulate the community once again.