Alberta History Along the Highway

Patricia Myers is a historian with the Historic Sites and Archives
Service, Alberta Community Development, and the author of Sky Riders: An
Illustrated History of Aviation in Alberta, 1906–1945.

One day as Ted Stone was zipping along a highway in Alberta, he failed
to stop at a historical point-of-interest sign. The incident provided
the inspiration for this book. Stone decided that there was a need for a
book on Alberta history specifically designed for the traveler. He has
divided the province into chunks, and then divided those chunks into the
major highways that traverse them. He tells you something about the
highway itself, and briefly describes towns and cities along the way. He
relates the historical significance of points of interest along the
highways nearby, and suggests more out-of-the way routes. Each section
contains a map, although not all points mentioned in the book appear on
the maps. Historical photographs provide interest and context. At the
end of the book, there’s a brief chronology of Alberta history, a
detailed index, a list of further reading, and a list of museums,
historical sites, and archives.

This book incorporates a smorgasbord approach to history that is
ultimately unsatisfying. For example, Stone’s treatment of the section
of Highway 21 that goes south into Edmonton swings from settlers
arriving at Josephburg at 1891, to the establishment of Fort
Saskatchewan in 1875, to a railway trestle bridge in the period 1910 to
1923, to the site of a settlement begun by Métis buffalo hunters and
freighters in the 1870s. The book would have served the traveler better
had each of its sections been prefaced by a solid narrative describing
the region’s development, thereby allowing the reader to place the
points of interest into some kind of context.