by Anthony Imbrogno, a volunteer with The Calgary Heritage Initiative Society/Heritage Inspires YYC
2025 is Calgary’s 150th anniversary! We’re writing 12 articles on the different eras of Calgary’s history.
Let’s start at the beginning, not quite the Big Bang but the Dinosaur Age, when Alberta lay underneath the Western Interior Seaway. Alongside the newly forming Rocky Mountains was a lush coastline of tropical forests and wetlands.
The land was inhabited by creatures like the duck-billed Edmontosaurus, which was hunted by Albertosaurus. The warm and shallow sea was full of marine life like plesiosaurs, sharks, and giant fish.
Today, Drumheller is one of the world’s richest dinosaur study areas. You’ll see many fossils at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, Canada’s only museum dedicated to ancient life.
Besides their scientific value, fossils became the fuels that have driven our economy and technology. After millions of years, shells formed porous layers on the seafloor where organic sludge settled and became exposed to heat and pressure, forming oil and gas.
In Turner Valley in 1914, natural gas sprayed out of one wellbore. Then in 1947, the Leduc-Rimbey reef became famous for an oil strike that launched the province onto the world stage.
On the Kainai Reserve southwest of Lethbridge, some ancient life turned into large deposits of iridescent shells, called ammolite. It’s also called iniskim (“buffalo stone”), since according to Indigenous legend the first stone saved people from starvation. Ammolite became Alberta’s official gemstone in 2022.
Fast forward to the last Ice Age, when 3 km-thick ice sheets covered 97% of Canada. Then the sheets melted, leaving markers all throughout Alberta. The Prince of Wales Hotel in Waterton sits atop a kame, an irregularly shaped hill formed from ice sheet movements.
Another sign of glaciation are erratics, massive rocks seemingly placed at random. The growing ice sheets carried rocks and then left them behind when the ice melted. The largest is Big Rock near Okotoks, meaning “rock” in the Blackfoot language.
Another Ice Age effect was exposing the Bering land bridge linking Eurasia and Alaska. About 14,000 years ago, several thousand hunter-gatherers crossed over, probably following woolly mammoth herds. They spread out across the Americas, which we’ll explore next month.
*All copyright images cannot be shared without prior permission.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_North_America_with_the_Western_Interior_Seaway_during_the_Campanian_(Upper_Cretaceous).png. Map of North America with the Western Interior Seaway during the Upper Cretaceous (∼75 million years ago). Scott D. Sampson, et. al., 2010, via Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.
https://digitalcollections.ucalgary.ca/asset-management/2R340823F8XA?WS=SearchResults. “General view of Drumheller, Alberta.”, [ca. 1920], (CU2225613) by Unknown. Courtesy of Glenbow Library and Archives Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
https://digitalcollections.ucalgary.ca/asset-management/2R3BF1FF3GTC?WS=SearchResults. “Drillers at Dingman #1 well (Calgary Petroleum Products #1), Turner Valley, Alberta.”, [ca. 1914-1917], (CU1134494) by Unknown. Courtesy of Glenbow Library and Archives Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary. Drillers at Dingman #1 well (Calgary Petroleum Products #1), Turner Valley, Alberta. Martin Hovis, head driller, on far left.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Placenticeras_meeki_Mus%C3%A9e_des_Confluences_18102015_3.jpg. Placenticeras meeki, an ammonite species from the Cretaceous, 80 million years old. Origin: Alberta. Displayed at the Musée des Confluences, Lyon, France. Photo by Vassil, via Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication.
https://digitalcollections.ucalgary.ca/asset-management/2R3BF1SV2NPT?WS=SearchResults. “Black Looking’s tipi, Lethbridge, Alberta.”, 1910, (CU1174949) by Rafton-Canning, Arthur. Courtesy of Glenbow Library and Archives Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
https://digitalcollections.ucalgary.ca/asset-management/2R3BF1OGEZCA. “Prince of Wales Hotel, Waterton, Alberta.”, [ca. 1930s], (CU195616) by Unknown. Courtesy of Glenbow Library and Archives Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
https://digitalcollections.ucalgary.ca/asset-management/2R3BF1FFF44H. “Big rock, Okotoks, Alberta.”, [ca. 1914-1917], (CU1134749) by Unknown. Courtesy of Glenbow Library and Archives Collection, Libraries and Cultural Resources Digital Collections, University of Calgary.
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