Horseshoe Dam Hydroelectric Plant

Clovis phase spear points used in present-day Alberta.

Clovis phase spear points represent the oldest hunting technology in Alberta, and indeed all of North America. These fluted, jagged stone points would be attached to a bone or wooden shaft and used to hunt enormous prey such as mammoths and mastodons.
Source: Historical Resources Management Branch, Archaeological Survey

Bow and arrow technology reaches present-day Alberta.

Bow and arrow technology in North America appears to have developed first in the Arctic before spreading south throughout the continent. The bow and arrow was ideally suited for use in the wide open spaces of the Great Plains, and was widely adopted across the region.
Source: Courtesy of Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump

The ‘Horse Revolution’ begins in present-day Alberta.

Horses were brought to North America by Spanish colonists in the sixteenth century. From the Spanish colony of New Mexico, horses spread across North America, reaching present-day Alberta in the 1730s. The adoption of the horse had a significant impact on the hunting/transportation patterns of Plains First Nations peoples.
Source: Royal Alberta Museum

Rocky Mountains National Park is established by the Canadian government.

One of the main attractions of the new park was the site’s natural hot springs. The luxurious Banff Springs Hotel, built by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1888, pumped water from the hot springs into its swimming pools and treatment rooms. Tourists flocked to the site to take advantage of the water’s supposed therapeutic healing powers.
Source: Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, v263-na-3562

The Calgary Power Company is formed.

The founder of the company, Max Aitken, was initially drawn to the region by its vast hydroelectricity potential. The company would develop into Canada’s largest investor-owned utility. In 1981, the company changed its name to TransAlta Utilities Corporation, in order to better reflect its provincial reach.
Source: Photo courtesy of TransAlta

Voters of Alberta narrowly reject proposal for public ownership of electricity utilities.

The 1948 provincial election included a plebiscite concerning ownership of electricity utilities in Alberta. Rural areas largely voted in favour of public ownership, while urban voters (particularly in southern Alberta) supported a continuation of private ownership. In the end, the vote was extremely close, with public ownership defeated by a mere 151 votes.
Source: Image courtesy of Peel’ Prairie Provinces, a digital initiative of the University of Alberta Libraries

Alberta’s first large-scale hydroelectric plant, Horseshoe Falls, came about through the intersection of two powerful and complementary forces that defined early twentieth-century southern Alberta. The first was demographic: the population of southern Alberta was surging with the immigration boom of the early twentieth century. The population of Calgary exploded, and by 1905, demand for electricity was placing an enormous strain on the city’s supply; in short, the city desperately needed new sources of electricity. This fused perfectly with the second force—the momentum of capitalist investment and economic growth. In the early 1900s, Alberta experienced one of the greatest economic booms in its history, and businessmen from across Canada eagerly sought out investment opportunities to capitalize on the province’s extraordinary prosperity. Given the tremendous demand for electricity, the development of hydropower seemed to offer entrepreneurs an outstanding investment opportunity.

In 1907, two Calgary businessmen
(W. M. Alexander and W. J. Budd) formed the Calgary Power and Transmission Company and negotiated the right to build a hydroelectric plant at Horseshoe

Falls. Despite the site’s ideal location, the two men had severely underestimated the engineering challenges and huge expense of the project. The pair had signed a contract to provide Calgary with electricity by 1909, an obligation they were unable to meet. In that year, wealthy financier Max Aitken stepped in and purchased the company (and its associated rights), which he renamed Calgary Power (now TransAlta). Construction on the Horseshoe Dam project began in 1909, but faced a variety of serious challenges, including floods, accidents and, in 1911, an outbreak of smallpox. While construction had been slow and plagued with challenges, the plant was finally finished on May 21, 1911—not a moment too soon, given the city’s power shortage.

The Horseshoe Hydroelectric Dam’s four horizontal Francis turbines gave the facility a peak capability of 14,000 kilowatts and provided the city’s budding industry, its growing population and the new CPR repair facilities a plentiful and cheap source of power. The plant would later be joined by four others on the Bow River watershed and would continue to provide reliable power for a century (and still counting).