Indian Head, Saskatchewan

Indian Head grain elevator on a winter day

Indian Head is served by the Canadian Pacific Railway. It is located at the junction of the Trans Canada Highway (Saskatchewan Highway 1) and highway 56. It is located 70 kilometers (43 mi) east of the provincial capital city of Regina and 315 miles (507 km) west of Winnipeg.[32]

An Indian trail used by fur traders, and red river carts pulling settlers effects was the first path between Moosomin and Fort Ellice, Manitoba. The transcontinental CPR paralleled this trail when coming through in the late 19th century and early 20th century.[33]

Indian Head next 2 exits. Katepwa Point Provincial park Sk Hwy 56 North between Qu'Appelle and Regina Saskatchewan Highway 1, the Trans Canada Highway

Provincial Highway 4, the precursor of the Trans–Canada Saskatchewan Highway 1, followed the surveyed grade of the transcontinental CPR between the Alberta and Manitoba border. Travel along Provincial Highway 4 before the 1940s would have been travelling on the square following the township road allowances, barbed wire fencing and rail lines. As the surveyed township roads were the easiest to travel, the first highway was designed on 90 degree right angle corners as the distance traversed the prairie along range roads and township roads.[34] Two-horse then eight-horse scrapers maintained these early dirt roads.

One of the problems that came about was when the Manitoba survey met the Saskatchewan survey. The Manitoba survey allowed for 100 feet (30 m) road allowances placed east and west every 1 mile (1.6 km). This system was followed west of Manitoba until just north of Indian Head. However, the Saskatchewan survey conducted in 1887, allowed for 66-foot (20 m) road allowances and placed roads east and west every 2 miles (3.2 km). The two surveys needed a 2 miles (3.2 km) correction which took years to smooth out.[35]

Originally roadwork was done by horsepower, and the municipality owned its horses and equipment. It was found that roadwork under the supervision of a councillor cost half as much as that under a road commission system. There were problems with labour. One cold November payday the whole crew quit, with not one left to even feed the horses. In 1909 a foreman shot one of his crew; the [Indian Head] council minutes make no further comment.

— History of Indian Head and District Inc., Indian Head: history of Indian Head and district (1981)[35]

Agriculture is one of Saskatchewan's main industries and taking grain to elevators was first accomplished by horse and cart, to be replaced around World War I by truck travel. Long haul trucking flourished between 1950 and 1970, and the trans–Canada was completed across Canada by 1970. Since the 1970s, 17 times the number of grain trucks and 95 percent of goods transported now are hauled by truck across the Saskatchewan.[36]

The first settlers were from Ontario and of Scottish origin. They moved into the district in 1882, ahead of the Canadian Pacific Railway.[7] The Bell Farm at Indian Head comprised 53,000 acres (210 km²). Such settlement was so huge and out of the ordinary that on many occasions the passenger trains would stop and let the passengers watch and videotape the harvesting operation.

Holden Farm

Reaping, Indian Head, Assiniboia, on Canadian Pacific Railway.

Historically, according to the Department of Agriculture, the Indian Head district ranked highest for wheat production in the North West Territories in 1903, 1904 and 1905. The Indian Head Experimental Station exceeded the Brandon Experimental station by seven bushels of wheat per acre for ten years.[60] For a town of population 1,800 in 1905, it boasted twelve grain elevators which were erected along the Canadian Pacific Railway, with each elevator having the capacity to hold approximately 350,000 bushels.[61] This location handled a higher quantity of grain in 1902 in the initiatory shipment stage than any other inland port in the world.[62]

The North-West Rebellion in 1885 caused the farmland of the Qu'Appelle Valley Farming Company to lie untended as their horses and wagons were used in the military engagement. The summer of 1886 provided a good crop as the land was allowed to collect moisture. The Indian Head Experimental Farm then followed up and said: "fallowing the land is the best preparation to ensure a crop."[63]

Reaping near Indian Head, 1900s

The Territorial Grain Growers’ Association (TGGA) was formed in the winter of 1901 at Indian Head. It was a collective of farmers in the Qu'Appelle Valley responding to the Sinatluta Case. In the fall of 1901 farmers were trying to ship a large harvest and they could not sell it due to a boxcar shortage. The existing elevators were not set up to hold the amount of grain that year. Farmers lost about half of a record wheat crop.[64] William Richard Motherwell became the first president and pressed for a change to the Manitoba Act which would allow farmers access to railway cars on a first-come, first-served basis.[65]

In the early 20th century Indian Head was the financial centre of the district and distribution point. Three banks established branches, the Opera House was erected by Mr. Osment, and The Club conducted its operations within the opera house block. The Lady Minto Hospital was erected at a cost of CA$6,000.[66] ($6,000 is equivalent to $195,000 in present day terms.[67][68][69] Streetscapes were extremely lively before the arrival of motorised automobiles, trucks and farm implements. Farmers' drives to Indian Head were extremely frequent; expeditions to Regina, the nearest city, the Qu'Appelle Valley and near towns were considerably less convenient than they became once car and truck engines existed and Number 1 Highway was vastly upgraded from the 1950s onwards: trips were most easily made by the frequent trains, which carried passengers in early days until substantially replaced by road vehicles.

Town from the Experimental Farm, 1900s

Dominion Experimental Farm, 1911

In 1887 the Dominion Experimental Farm was founded as one of the original research stations in Canada. Today it is still doing research and giving valuable information to farmers.[70] Settlement began to accelerate seriously after 1900 and by the outbreak of World War I in 1914 its population had reached 1200.[7] In 1902, the PFRA tree nursery was inaugurated and is still shipping out several million trees each year for farm shelterbelts in the three prairie provinces. "The Indian Head Experimental Farm [was] responsible for the whole of the North-West Territories. The intent of the farm was to meet the needs of new settlers for reliable information on the best farming methods and practices for local conditions. Long-term studies with field crops, animal husbandry and horticulture were initiated….During the 1930s, a concerted effort against the blowing topsoil by the Indian Head Experimental Farm and [other] …stations … was effective in developing tillage methods that reduced soil erosion. The post-war years saw great changes with the introduction of selective chemicals to control insects, plant diseases and [w]eeds. Programs were set up at all stations to advise farmers on the use of these new chemicals. Nutrition and management studies at Indian Head [and other stations] have done much to improve livestock production in the province."[71]

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  CPR elevators and station Indian Head NWT, ie prior to formation of the Province of Saskatchewan in 1905
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  Park with hotel, 1900s
• 
  Imperial Hotel, Indian Head 1900s. Note absence of motor vehicles.
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  Grand Avenue, Indian Head, 1910s.
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  Indian Head main street identified in publication as "191-" but quite likely much earlier, before the creation of the Province of Saskatchewan in 1910

In the days of the last two decades of the 19th century, Indian Head was a significant centre for people arriving in the North-West Territories by train from Ontario. It was necessary for the town to have hotel accommodation for travellers and several were on hand.

Their appearance now seems extraordinarily substantial but at the beginning of settlement of what was later to become the provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta it appeared certain that the population of the eventual provinces would be substantially greater than it turned out and that the provincial capital, whatever it might be, would be vastly larger.

Indian Head streetscapes were remarkably lively in the town's early days, when automobiles and trucks had not yet arrived and agricultural, shopping and social expeditions to town were extremely frequent compared to later days when expeditions to Regina or the Qu'Appelle Valley became significantly faster and more convenient than after World War I, when automobiles and trucks began to become common: until then, expeditions to the city generally conducted by train—with a lengthy interruption with little travel of any kind from the 1929 onset of the Great Depression until the 1945 end of World War II.

The Philharmonic Society in Indian Head was established in the early 20th century.[72] In 1914, A.S. Vogt (founder of the Mendelssohn Choir) claimed that Saskatchewan’s excellent choral work was one benefit of the province’s isolation and corresponding need to create its own art.[72]

At its outset, Indian Head had substantial churches, though as elsewhere in Canada religiosity significantly declined beginning in the late 1960s. In the beginning, the denominations were principally Presbyterian, Methodist, Anglican and Roman Catholic.

• 
  Indian Head Methodist Church 190-?.
• 
  St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Indian Head, 190-?.
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  Children at Orange Orphanage, Indian Head. 192-?.
• 
  Orange Orphanage circa 1925.
• 
  Bishop's Court and Anglican church, Indian Head, after 1905

Indian Head's Methodist church became United Church in 1925 but as in nearby Qu'Appelle the Presbyterian church divided, with a portion of the congregation constituting a continuing separate Presbyterian church. The Indian Head and Qu'Appelle Presbyterian churches were demanding if not downright prestigious and obtained clergy of considerable talent, who on leaving proceeded to urban congregations such as First Presbyterian in Regina. Thereafter the Presbyterians shared a clergyman with the Presbyterian church in Qu'Appelle, which had withdrawn from the old Presbyterian church thereupon church union. "In 1923 the Orange Benevolent Society, then a substantial service club of the Loyal Orange Lodge established the Orange Home and Orange Home Farm for children from distressed families."[73]

The Anglican Church (until 1955 the "Church of England") Diocese of Qu'Appelle was originally centred in the nearby town of Qu'Appelle, whose parish church was the pro-cathedral for southern Saskatchewan. The Hon. Edgar Dewdney was appointed Lieutenant-Governor of the North-West Territories (sic) December 3, 1881, and it was not immediately clear that he would choose Pile-of-Bones, renamed Regina in 1882—where he had acquired land to sell for private profit—as the capital of the Territories. It had previously been thought likely that other sites would be chosen, including Prince Albert, the seat-of-government of the Territories' District of Saskatchewan, Fort Qu'Appelle and Qu'Appelle: this accounts for the Church of England's original choice of Qu'Appelle and uncertainty as to what to choose in the alternative. Bishop's Court, the residence of the diocesan bishop, was relocated from Qu'Appelle to Indian Head in 1895 before being further relocated to Regina. Such matters were of substantially greater interest back then and would remain so until the end of the 1960s when in Indian Head as in other Canadian cities and towns participation in religion generally began steadily decreasing. Nevertheless, St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church had "[t]he first...built in the early 1900s, and the present church was completed in 1961."[74][75]