Heritage in the Hat: Boom

By Medicine Hat News on October 28, 2017.

Not the sound of thunder nor the latest test at CFB Suffield, but the biggest explosion of economic growth our city has ever seen, about 1906-1914.

Following the CPR’s arrival in 1883, a town grew up around the railroad tracks near the South Saskatchewan River and incorporated in 1898. Ranching dominated the economic landscape of southern Alberta until the mid-1890s, when a partial transition to farming began as a wave of immigrants arrived looking for farmland. Despite the dry climate, crops grew and John McNeely built the first flour mill, Medicine Hat Milling Co., in 1901. By 1912, benefitting from its location on the railroad, Medicine Hat was the milling capital of Western Canada with four flour mills and one linseed mill in operation.

Before 1900, the settlement resembled many other prairie communities but shallow natural gas changed all that. Discovered accidentally by the CPR west of Redcliff in 1883, not much was initially made of this resource. In 1891, Sir William Van Horne, president of the CPR, recommended the town prospect for coal. Drilling began near the location of Medicine Hat’s first hospital and at 200 metres, instead of coal, natural gas was struck. Charles Coulter drilled a well in his back yard in 1899 and, with his own patented furnace, used the gas to heat his house. By 1903, all Medicine Hat homes were supplied with gas.

To replace coal as fuel, Mr. Grant’s rig drilled a gas well in 1901 for the Purmal Brick Company, one of the first industrial users. In 1906, the growing town became the City of Medicine Hat. A private company attempted to purchase the gas fields; however, council chose to maintain the gas as a public utility and leveraged it for economic development. Cheap gas, land and location on the CPR were the fuel for the economic expansion to come.

By 1911, Medicine Hat led Canada in the total percentage of building permits issued and the next year experienced a 281 per cent increase in permits. Land speculation was rampant, construction required even more workers and no end was in sight. A huge number of our historic buildings were built in these years. A panoramic photo from the peak in 1913 shows factories for crayons, steel, brass, roses, clay products, mattresses and more, sprawling through the Flats on either side of the railroad. That year, Alberta Clay Products shipped 4,500 rail car loads of product, employing 200 people, the largest factory in the pre-war period.

That was the first boom, and the second was the “shot heard around the world,” the assassination of an Austrian duke that started the Great War. The musical chairs game that was land speculation ground to a halt and many were ruined. Non-essential industries shut down and manpower was redirected to the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Medicine Hat would never be the same.

Malcolm Sissons is the chair of the Heritage Resources Committee. The Esplanade Archives currently features a photographic display of boom-time industries including the full 1913 panorama photo.

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