Calgary & Southern Alberta

The Headworks on the Bow River at Calgary
Courtesy of Western Irrigation District

Irrigation of southern Alberta began with small projects near Calgary in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The federal government started regulating and controlling such projects in 1894, with the passage of the North-West Irrigation Act. Large-scale irrigation did not develop, however, until Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior, gave it true initiative.

One of largest and most successful of the early projects, begun in 1898, resulted from the partnership between Galt coal mining interests and the Mormon church. Irrigation made new crops available. Sugar beets were one of the first such crops to be grown extensively. In 1903, the church lent its support to Mormon member Jesse Knight, who established a sugar factory at Raymond. Since then, the sugar beet industry has remained an important part of southern Alberta's economy.

The CPR also made major contributions to irrigation in order to promote colonisation and rail traffic on the three million acres of land it owned in the arid region between Brooks and Calgary. The Bow River Irrigation Project, begun in 1903, included the construction of the Bassano Dam and the Brooks Aqueduct.