Rutherford sawmill in the Cypress Hills (1905).--PHOTO COURTESY ESPLANADE ARTS & HERITAGE CENTRE
Outside the city, with nary a tree in sight, it is hard to imagine a nearby lumber industry. And yet, lumbering in the Cypress Hills goes back to 1883 and began with a boondoggle.
In 1882, the future route of the CPR across the southern prairies became known and speculators tried to profit. Lumber was a key component for construction; one mile of track required 3,000 ties. Timber licences were sold by the federal Department of the Interior and a licensee had to erect a sawmill. The CPR was cutting trees without permit in the Hills near Nichol Springs.
John Adams, a Winnipeg “timber cruiser,” identified the Cypress Hills as having great potential. He contacted John Rykert, Ontario Conservative MP, who had his wife purchase the timber licence for $500 without public tender.
Adams then arranged the sale of the licence to Sands Lumber Company of Michigan for $200,000, a fortune in those days. The immense profit was split between Rykert and Adams. By 1890, the corruption was uncovered and went to court.
Louis Sands, a Swedish immigrant who started as a lumberjack, operated a large lumbering concern in Michigan. Once the timber licence was purchased, Sands sent out sawmill equipment and a team under Abram Adsit.
It was unloaded in Irvine in 1883 and erected north of Elkwater Lake. Trees were felled in winter and floated to the sawmill in spring. Nels Adsit took over running the sawmill from his father who went ranching.
In town, local entrepreneur William Finlay established his lumberyard in 1884, sourcing lumber from B.C. Sands Lumber, which produced lumber but not profit. Louis Sands came out to assess the situation and decided to abandon the project about 1889.
Medicine Hat city council proposed to move the sawmill into town and float logs from the mountains down the river but the sawmill continued operating under Adsit before it was moved east in 1892.
Others attempted to exploit the Cypress Hills forest. William Smibert set up a sawmill on the bench about 1898 but sold it a year later to Scottish immigrants William and Jack Rutherford. In 1906, the provincial government decided to designate the Hills a forest reserve and when the timber licence expired in 1909, the sawmill was moved to B.C. The Rutherford family moved to Medicine Hat where William built and operated the Gas City Planing Mill from 1913 until his death in 1917.
Lumbering operations continued sporadically in the decades following, including a forestry camp during the Depression. The 1934 forest fire started at the abandoned Rutherford sawmill site. Elkwater entrepreneur Wally May harvested the burnt timber and sold it in Medicine Hat, including to the coal mines for mine props, taking coal in exchange to sell to settlers.
During the Second World War prisoners-of-war did forestry work operating from a site north-east of today’s golf course and where parks superintendent Andy Salus (1963-74) later operated a sawmill for use by the park.
The First Nations who used lodgepole pines for their tipis, ranchers for their barns and the sporadic lumber industry log no more but the pines of the Cypress Hills continue to whisper.
Malcolm Sissons is vice-president of the Historical Society of Medicine Hat and District.
