Roots of History
The Gazette is digging into a different part of Sturgeon County’s history each month this year to commemorate the county’s centennial. Do you have a topic you want covered? Email [email protected] with your suggestions.
If Sturgeon County’s roots are in its farms, its economic blooms are in oil – a bloom that first blossomed in a farmer’s field near Redwater.
August 30, 1948: a small crew of Imperial Oil workers are drilling some 1,000 metres into Hilton Cook’s farm when they hit some promising looking brown, oil-stained lime. A test line is inserted. Gas flares off for half an hour. Then, nothing.
“About 10 minutes later, there was a gurgling and a rushing sound in the flare line,” crew member Fin Lineham recounts in Redwater Oil Field.
“Much to everyone’s surprise ... a fine mist of oil started to blow out the end of the pipe,” he said, one that would eventually reach 40 feet in height.
It was the birth of the Redwater Discovery Well – the first of what would be hundreds of oil wells drilled in the Redwater region. The wealth – and woes – this oil boom brought to the region would shape the county for the next 70 years and continue to power its prosperity today.
From farm town to boom town
While oil companies had been active in Alberta since the early 1900s, the industry didn’t really take off until Imperial Oil struck it rich in Leduc in 1947, reports the Alberta’s Energy Resources Heritage website.Redwater’s geology was similar to that of Leduc, which prompted Imperial to start drilling around here, said Audrey Petruk, vice-president of the Redwater and District Museum. They did a lot of dry wells, but the Cook farm well turned out to be a gusher.
That gusher drew a deluge of engineers, geologists, and roughnecks to Redwater, transforming it virtually overnight into North America’s biggest hamlet.
“When they struck the oil, they went from approximately 90 people living here to 3,000,” Petruk said.
“Not even in a year! In months!”
The tiny hamlet did not have anywhere near the amount of rooms available to host all these guests. Redwater Oil Field reports that oil workers took to sleeping in barns, tents, sheds, granaries, and chicken coops, with some even using old streetcars imported from Edmonton.
The community’s population would reach 4,400 at the peak of this oil boom, Redwater Oil Field reports. Government officials scrambled to keep up, as there was no local authority in place to handle all these people. Redwater organized as a village by the end of 1949 and leapt to town status about 11 months later.
Oil companies started building hundreds of shed-sized “skid shacks” for their workers, Petruk said. By 1949, a whole subdivision of these little white homes had sprung up around the community.
Businesses sprouted up all along the town’s muddy main street, Redwater Oil Field reports. The post office added some 264 boxes to handle the mail, and one popular local eatery was cranking out a thousand meals a day to oil workers. The town soon boasted two movie theatres, a new hotel, a beauty salon, and a taxi service.
Petruk said her family came to town in 1951, by which time the initial rush of workers had ended and the population had fallen to about a thousand. At the time, there were some 900 oil wells in operation around the community.
Petruk said the stench of burning sulphur was everywhere – her dad called it “the smell of money” – as were huge plumes of black smoke.
“During the day you would see all these flares burning,” she said, as rig workers used open pits to burn off excess oil and natural gas.
“It looked like a fair almost, all lit up at night.”
Petruk said oil workers would work long hours and hit the bars after work, often resulting in brawls on Main Street.
“It was rough and tough,” she said, and reminiscent of what Fort McMurray would be like decades later.
“There was excitement in the community.”
Spinoffs arise
The Redwater oil field drew other industries to the Sturgeon region, such as the Imperial Oil gas plant.Built in 1957 to refine the natural gas coming off area oil wells, the plant brought with it new permanent jobs less suited for the itinerant roughneck, said Redwater museum volunteer Chris Berget. You saw more people willing to put down roots in the community, and residents working together to build churches, a pool, and schools towards the 1960s.
Imperial opened what is now the Nutrien Redwater fertilizer plant around 1969 to make use of the sulphur produced by the gas plant.
Process operator Allan Rosenthal said he started at the plant shortly after it opened and has been there ever since. Back then, the plant was pretty much the only industrial site around in the southeast part of the county.
“It was unique to see another vehicle that was not owned by another co-worker,” he said, and not unusual to be trapped for days at work due to bad roads and snow.
The plant was a major employer in the county at the time, with some 400 people on site, Rosenthal said. It was also about a third of its current size, and was just starting to pile up what today is a roughly 45 million tonne mountain of gypsum waste. Williams Energy and the Degussa chemical plant joined it in what is now the Heartland region in the next two decades.
High oil prices in the late 1990s prompted Fort Saskatchewan and the counties of Lamont, Sturgeon, and Strathcona to pool their resources in 1998 to attract investment as the Alberta Industrial Heartland Association, said former Sturgeon County mayor Helmut Hinteregger.
When oil giants like North West, Synenco, Suncor, and Petro Canada came seeking large tracts of land for upgraders, the association agreed to try to rezone some 194 square kilometres of their municipalities to heavy industrial, a fair chunk of which was in Sturgeon.
“From the farmers, there was a lot of opposition,” Hinteregger said, as the association was proposing to plunk a bunch of upgraders down in the middle of farmland.
Many county residents banded together in opposition as the Heartland Citizens Coalition, citing concerns about the impacts of big industry on noise, traffic, farming, and the environment. Hinteregger said he lost a lot of sleep trying to balance the interest of industry and farmers. County council ultimately approved the Industrial Heartland area structure plan in a 4-3 vote in April 2001.
But the upgrader boom fizzled out due to the 2007-2008 recession, and just one of the four planned upgraders in Sturgeon actually materialized. Almost 80 quarter-sections of rezoned farmland in the Heartland are still sitting vacant today, Hinteregger said.
The future is oil?
The Redwater Discovery Well is still producing oil, although its original derrick has since been moved next to the town’s multiplex to serve as a tourist attraction.Oil and oil companies are still a major part of Redwater and Sturgeon after 70 years, providing significant jobs and tax dollars to residents of both, said Redwater Mayor Mel Smith. Projects such as the Sturgeon Refinery continue to draw business to Redwater, with two new hotels opening in the last three years and a new Tim Hortons opening this Friday.
“It’s all because of the activity around here,” Smith said.
“That’s what keeps us alive.”
But the growth of oil has also put considerable wear on county roads, and sparked concerns about traffic safety, noise, and air pollution.
“We fight traffic every day,” says Wayne Groot, one of the few farmers still in the Heartland region, and flares and spotlights from industry now light up the whole eastern skyline from his home.
“The oil industry has really not had an upside for us.”
Hinteregger said oil companies would have to use better technologies to address their impacts on the environment in the county, while the county would have to use its oil revenues to improve roads and facilities for the community.
“I’d like to think there’s a future for coexistence here,” he said of industry and agriculture, but it’s tough to say for sure.
Petruk said she didn’t expect the growth of the industry to stop anytime soon.
“I think as long as there’s a need for oil out there, there will always be a Redwater,” Petruk said.
