Prairie Sentinels: Camrose Alberta

Here’s the last wood prairie sentinel in Camrose Alberta, a type of building once common out in grain country, but to find one standing today is something rare. That’s doubly so for a grain elevator still in use, as this one is. While a late model example, from the 1960s, it’s representative of a design going back to the early 1900s and built by the thousands across the prairies.

It still wears “Pool” colours, but has not been in their employ for decades. That company, the Alberta Wheat Pool, doesn’t even exist anymore and disappeared due to a series of mergers starting in the 1990s. One of the resultant firms that later came out of this crazy union (a complex one involving many grain firms over many years) is Viterra and they’re listed as operator on a sign out front. So in a complicated and round about way the building still remains in the family.

The building appears to be used in conjunction with Viterra’s specialized oat plant in town but in what capacity is not clear. One document found suggests it’s used for granular fertilizer storage, but we can’t say for sure, and another mentions it’ss a satellite facility for the main plant. Anyone? What ever the case, every once in a while a string of rail cars will be spotted on the siding that runs out front.

The grain elevator sits along Canadian National’s north/south secondary line between Edmonton and Calgary. Camrose was once a super-busy railway hub and served by a spider web of lines going in every direction of a compass and built by three competing firms. A lot of that track has been pulled up and now but a memory.

Things aren’t quite as hectic compared those heady days of old, but this line and that of competitor Canadian Pacific Railway, still bisect the community and see a fair number of trains. The crossing of the two lines happens a bit north of and within sight of the elevator.

When built in 1965 it was Alberta Wheat Pool #2 and the old signage for that is still there if you look. The Pool eventually had three grain loading facilities in Camrose (on two railways), so this helped ID the various facilities and make order of it all.

While this wood elevator came late in the game, it looks very much like any other but is larger in capacity that older examples. They built it with an integral annex on one side and this helped increase capacity many fold over one without. Wood elevators we’re constructed into the 1980s with minimal change, but the majority predated the 1940s.

The little building out front houses the elevator offices and the drive machinery.

It became tradition to paint the town’s name on the sides of a grain elevator and while the lettering here is faded, it’s still readable. Lost on the prairies in the old days? Just go down by the tracks and look up. Every town out on the great plains had an elevator or two, so you soon knew where you were.

The colouring of a building might help determine its lineage as it did here. Each grain network, in later years at least (1960s and beyond) painted them in unique ways. If you saw this blue/green, you knew it was a Pool elevator and nothing else.

For decades, the Alberta Wheat Pool was the largest grain handling firm in the province (and one of the biggest in all Canada) and they had facilities in nearly every prairie town with rail service. The company dates back to the mid-1920s and recall vanished from the scene in the 1990s. All that time has passed yet this building still displays company colours, albeit faded and weathered.

At one time there were over seventeen hundred wooden grain elevators in the province (built early 1900s-1980s) but most were gone by early 2000s. Today, a couple hundred remain but each year we loose a few more. There were thousands and thousands more in Saskatchewan and Manitoba but their numbers have similarly dwindled. They’re going fast and not coming back.

Of those remaining, a small number of these buildings are still being used commercially, as we see here (here’s another: Bashaw Processors), some have been saved by local farmers to use for grain storage, some are in museums and the remainder are simply abandoned.

The city of Camrose is home to about eighteen thousand folks and dates back to the early 1900s. It’s the economic centre of the area and located about a hundred clicks southeast of Edmonton. Farming’s big, but you already knew that.

We’ve shared a few photos showing other scenes in town from this same visit and this includes the Ukrainian Church reflected in the ice at Mirror Lake. This is a reservoir put in the by the railway (CPR) long ago and used to fill their steam locomotives, but now it’s been incorporated into a park.

Seen that next morning while out for a walk, the Hotel Alice from the late 1920s, a majestic structure that seems well kept up.

We just gotta come back and take a closer look at these two.

Know more (new windows): Jim Pearson Vanishing Sentinels (a shout out to a friend we lost and the authority on grain elevators) and Camrose Alberta.

There’s an endless stream of new content being posted regularly, so be sure to stop by often.

They’re saying…

”I enjoy history so really enjoy the pictures and back stories.” Ted Swanson.

Just down the tracks…
Camrose Heritage Railway Station & Park.

More like this…
Grain Elevators of DeWinton – Close to home and one’s really old.
Prairie Sentinels – Flaxcombe Saskatchewan – Out in Saskatchewan, but is that a suprise?
Creston BC Grain Elevators – In an un-prairie like setting and in the mountains.

If you wish more information on what’s seen here, don’t hesitate to: contact us!

Date of Adventure: November 2021.
Location(s): Camrose, AB.
Article references and thanks: Book – A light into the past: a history of Camrose, 1905-1980 and the City of Camrose.

Down by the CN tracks in Camrose Alberta (shot from a road).

This late model prairie sentinel dates from the ’60s.

In “Pool” colours.

The office out front.

It operated as AWP No. 2.

These wood elevators are becoming a rare breed.

In the soft light that comes at the end of day.

Later that evening, a look across to the Ukrainian Church.

Next morning, the Hotel Alice.

Built in 1928.