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ericfromcowtown
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# Posted: 20 Jul 2013 11:41am - Edited by: ericfromcowtown
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Just a quarter mile from our cabin, one can see an old homesteader's cabin along the lake.
This portion of Alberta, now called Special Area 2, was one of the last portions of the province to be opened up to homesteaders. By the 20s, all the good land was gone, and this more-desolate portion of the province became home to thousands of late-to-the-game farmers and ranchers. Communities sprung up, churches and school houses built. When the dust bowl came in the 30s, the vast majority of these folk picked up and left and the land reverted back to the Crown (government). The houses were torn down, or rotted away.
Things haven't changed much in 80 years. Today Special Area 2 is still too sparsely populated to be its own self-governing municipality, but is ruled from Edmonton. Wikipedia shows that just over 2000 people live in its 9300 square kilometres (3600 square miles for my American friends).
Here's some pictures of the old homestead. I guess it would be 600 square feet? I wonder how many people lived here. The winds would howl and the snow would get deep in the dead of winter. No thanks!
Home sweet home
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30 x 20?
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Too dangerous to go in
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Been there for awhile
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ericfromcowtown
Member
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# Posted: 20 Jul 2013 12:00pm
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More photos
Pretty view
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Today's Inhabitants
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Martian
Member
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# Posted: 20 Jul 2013 02:14pm - Edited by: Martian
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We managed to buy an old homestead here in Kansas. This county has less than 3000 people in 800sqmi; 1800 of them in the two biggest towns. Not a single traffic light in the whole county! While disassembling the old house, we found post cards from the '20s. They said the folks sending them would love to come visit, but they had had the "chills" and weren't up to such an arduous journey....it was sent from a town twenty miles away!
I love the old stove, and despite the danger, I'd of had to explore.
Tom
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cabingal3
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# Posted: 20 Jul 2013 03:05pm
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wonderful.i love it.i am with Tom,i love the old stove and i would have to venture in.lol.to enticing.
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ericfromcowtown
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# Posted: 20 Jul 2013 04:34pm
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I thought about risking going in. Through one of the windows you could see a couple old yellowed newspapers. You couldn't make out anything other than that they were newspapers from the window. I would have loved to see the date. However, there were holes in the floor all over the place and part of the ceiling had collapsed. I was up at the cabin this time by myself - no one would have come looking for me if I had hurt myself. Besides, there was a huge nest built on top of the kitchen cabinets in the kitchen, and the thought of some bird shrieking and coming at me in a confined space as I disturb its home gave me "the willies." 
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Heck
Member
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# Posted: 22 Apr 2017 01:48pm
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Is that old homestead along Berry Creek on the East side, North on Carolside Dam?
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DaveBell
Moderator
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# Posted: 22 Apr 2017 07:38pm
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Where are the trees?
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bldginsp
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# Posted: 22 Apr 2017 10:35pm
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Someone's hopes and dreams lost to the Dust Bowl.
Ken Burns did a good documentary on the Dust Bowl, but he focused on the Kansas/Texas/Colorado area. I didn't know it was equally severe in Alberta.
In Burns documentary, he focused on one family where they homesteaded on a piece of land, trying many different approaches but always meeting minimal success if not failure. They stuck with it and survived but never really prospered. At one point the husband, who had persistently pursued the woman until she married him, told her he wouldn't blame her if she left, due to nearly total crop failure. She said she would never leave no matter what, and she didn't.
I wonder what dramas played out in that little homestead in rural Alberta when the winter bore down hard-
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