Wrentham Alberta 25 Years Apart

Serenaded by a church service playing out in the building directly behind, our shot is lined up. A little to the left, angle up slightly, review the original image and then check it in the eyepiece. Comes a bit more fiddling, a grid check and if zoned in, and only then, press the shutter. Click! Then readjust a little and do it all again…and again…and again. A half dozen photos are in the can, all similar but from slightly differing positions and we’re done (hopefully anyway). We’re in the hamlet of Wrentham Alberta, the subject is grain elevators and we’re shooting a Then & Now.

The original photo comes from a friend and shows a scene in that little southern Alberta community a quarter century ago (thank you Allan, by the way). Back when he visited the view differed with twice as many elevators seen then verses today. The business of grain handling has changed a lot since, but that’s another story altogether. Know this, however, these buildings are fast disappearing and on the endangered list.

The then image dates from 1995 and shows a line of four prairie sentinels. The three in back were all properties of the Alberta Wheat Pool* and wear company colours. Dating, variously, from the 1920s to the 1960s period, notice how they’re all similar in appearance in spite of their age differences. The design worked well I guess. Now only one of this trio remains (the furthest one) and presently privately owned it’s used for grain storage. The two in the middle were gone by about the year 2000.

One day, we should take a closer look at the Pool elevator in the distance. We keep saying that.

The silver elevator (so coloured due to the fire mitigating metal sheathing) also once belonged to the Pool, but only briefly. Built for Ogilvie Flour Mills in the mid-1920s, it replaced an earlier, smaller elevator from the decade before. The Alberta Pool bought out Ogilvie’s modest network of rural grain elevators in 1960 and closed most of them soon after. This one lasted into 1968, with the Pool then selling it to a local farmer. Old elevators could be had for a song and made fine offsite storage facilities (the reason many survived).

Used well into the 2010s in that capacity, it was then acquired by a group working to preserve the historic structure (the Ogilvie Wooden Grain Elevator Society).

We’ve visited this building many times over the years and similarly written about it endlessly and to know more of its history, go here: Ogilvie’s Wrentham and here Ogilvie Grain Elevator Wrentham Alberta

Train tracks run in behind. From the 1910s to about 2000, this stretch belonged to the CPR and was a typical prairie branchline. Then it sat unused for a time, rails in place and rusting away, before being acquired by short line operator Forty Mile Rail in 2016. This firm continues to use the line, although at the best of times there’s not a lot of traffic. Some grain is moved and there were a series of wind turbine trains, but mostly they use a good portion of their track to store excess railcars waiting to be called back to service. That’s not necessarily a bad gig and many small railways do well in the storage business.

There used to be a siding serving all the elevators, but it’s long been pulled up.

Now let’s compare the photos and see what’s changed over time.

The street’s pretty much the same and the light poles similarly so. They’re all leaning as they were.

The parking lot we’re standing on is for the church mentioned earlier and had we spun around you’d see it full of cars and inside, you could hear the singing plain as day. The congregation proved to be an vocal bunch!

Back to the T&N – there appears to be a group of buildings on the far side of the silver elevator in the old photo and while we looked in the field there was nothing to indicate anything ever stood there. It’s all gone. What looks to be a truck is parked in the driveway of that same elevator, although it could just be a shadow. Either way, something must be going on with the doors open like that.

We’re not sure if the van seen in the distance (bottom-right), in the original photo, belonged to the photographer or not. We asked them but have not heard back as of publication, but if it is, or who ever it belonged to, we ended up parking the Mighty BIGDoer-mobile almost in the same spot. This turned out to be completely dumb luck and we didn’t even notice the coincidence until processing the images.

The sky came alive on our visit and rumbled away as we shot. The heaven’s opened up, the wind came, the rain fell, the sky cleared and then darkened again, all within a short time. Then came a rainbow and in the blink of an eye it was gone. This is weather in Alberta! In the original photo it looked like a much calmer day.

So there we have it, much change, and yet the scene remains almost timeless.

Wrentham is a small community but oddly there seems to be no recent population figures available. We know not many folks call it home and in location, it’s a bit southeast of Lethbridge. There’s no open businesses and little going on, expect oddly right behind us. The church seemed to be doing a booming business and so I guess Wrentham’s got the spirit!

This particular Then & Now lined up well, although full disclosure, most of the ones we shoot are failures. Usually they will end up looking good in the camera, but on closer inspection on a bigger screen don’t line up as hoped. I’d like to say we’re getting better at it, but mostly it’s a hit or miss kind of thing and always has been. But doing it well, as it turned out here, makes the effort all worth it.

Who’s with me, though? Let’s do more like this…yeah?

*That the Pool had multiple outlets is not all that odd and sometimes new elevators got added over time to handle extra capacity, or they may have come via the acquisition of a competitor. The latter is not unheard of in this crazy industry. The Pool was the provinces biggest grain handling network back in the day.

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To know more about the grain companies mentioned, go here: Ogilvie Flour Mills and here: Alberta Wheat Pool.

They’re saying…

”Wonderful articles on small forgotten towns. Several that I knew very well. Thanks for doing this.” Jan Tooth (our pleasure).

From previous visits to the Ogilvie Grain Elevator: Ogilvie’s Wrentham and Ogilvie Grain Elevator Wrentham Alberta

The firm’s former mill:
Medicine Hat Then & Now – Ogilvie’s – Home of Royal Flour.

More Then & Nows with grain elevators…
East Coulee Alberta then and now – at the Atlas Mine Historic site.
Arrowwood Alberta then and now – where there was five, now it’s one.

Something to say and no one to say it to? Go here: contact us!

Date of Adventure: June 2020.
Location: Wrentham, Alberta.
Article references and thanks: Allan Brooker, The Ogilvie Wooden Grain Elevator Society, Jason Sailer, Cody Kapscos, Dan Overes and author Jim Pearson, Online – Manitoba History: The Flour Milling Industry in Manitoba Since 1870 (it also touches on Alberta operations).

The same spot 25 years separated. Original: Allan Brooker.

This is the Ogilvie in Wrentham Alberta.

Notice the faded Miracle Feeds logo.

The gorgeous heavens.

Those in between are long gone.

The sky had personality this evening.