BOW CITY

NAME: Bow City COUNTY: N/A ROADS: 4WD GRID: 2 CLIMATE: Mild summer,cold winter BEST TIME TO VISIT: Summer

COMMENTS: SW Corner of Alberta REMAINS: Nothing

Located 12 miles south of the Trans-Canada Highway on Highway36 then about eight miles west along Secondary Road 539, Bow City was once a humming little coal-mining town. The district was opened for homesteading in 1907 and brought get-rich-quick promoters flocking to the area touting vast coal deposits. It was touted as the Pittsburg of the West. It appeared for a time that a genuine city would sprout on the plains but, unfortunately, the First World War came along, capital dried up and the much-ballyhooed project never materialized. Bow City received a small shot in the arm when strip mining began in 1932 then again during the Second World War when the Alberta government financed a new townsite on the south bank of the Bow River to house the miners who were keeping the coal flowing to fuel Canada’s considerable war effort. But after the war natural gas and fuel oil became the main heating fuels and coal was gradually phased out and the Bow City mines abandoned. H.B. Chenoweth

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