A river runs
through it
Okotoks’ growth nourished by
Sheep River waters
THE NAME OKOTOKS comes from the Blackfoot
word for “rock” and it is believed that the
Big Rock, seven kilometres west of Okotoks,
was important to many native peoples as a
landmark, gathering point and as a place of
spiritual significance. Until the 1800s, Okotoks
was part of a large hunting ground roamed
mostly by Stoney, Blackfoot and Sarcee tribes
in their search for buffalo
Soon after David Thompson started
to explore the area in the 1800s white
traders and wagon trains followed and in
1874 a trading post on the current town
site was built to help ship goods along the
famous Macleod Trail which stretched from
Fort Benton, Montana, through to much of
Alberta. Between 1880 and 1882 three men:
Kenneth Cameron, Alexander McRae and John
MacMillan built the first stopping houses and
from there a permanent community at the safe
river crossing was born.
John Lineham’s lumber company, Okotoks’
most important industry at the time, relied on
the Sheep River in the spring to transport trees
cut in Kananskis country during the winter.
It flourished in the late 1800s and in 1891 it
employed 135 people and produced 30,000 feet
of lumber per day. Two of his family’s houses still
stand on Elma Street as does the big red barn
from Lineham’s lumber operation on Riverside
Drive, which now houses the Bull Pen Pub. The
original Lineham homestead at 10 Elma Street,
was moved in 1902 when it was nearly destroyed
by flooding. Feeding the glacial alluvial plains,
the Sheep River has periodically flooded in the
spring at times fairly seriously as it did in 1915
and recently in 2005 when in covered downtown
Okotok’s main streets.
From top:
• Heritage House
• John Lineham’s
house by river, 1902.
• Okotoks street in
1906.
In addition to agriculture, some of the best bricks
in the west were produced at the turn of the century
from four brick making plants which used to be
referred to as the Sandstone area (for which a new
community is now named). A number of grand brick
and stone buildings signifying permanence were
built including Stockton Block (1903) on Elizabeth
Street and Mahon House (1903) on Elma Street
which was the first house to have running water
compliments of the Sheep. In 1940, Okotoks even
had a coal mine on North Railway Street and many
people in this area still remember the bright yellow
three-storey high sulphur blocks that used to sit
where the new Seaman Stadium is back in the ‘60s.
Okotoks reached its first population peak of 1,900
people in 1906 when it had all of the amenities a
western town then could offer – much of this being
further stimulated by CP Rail as it had arrived in
1892. While the wooden boardwalks and hitching
posts came down in 1929, spelling the end of one
boomtown economy, people and businesses came
and went right up into the 1970s, and it’s been nonstop growth ever since. OL
Photos courtesy
Okotoks Museum
and Archives.
