Site of Old Duhamel - Duhamel, Alberta
Posted by: 
wildwoodke
N 52° 56.840 W 112° 57.883
12U E 367993 N 5868218
This cairn and plaque marks the former townsite, prior to making way for the railway of Duhamel, Alberta.
Waymark Code: WMEGYF
Location: Alberta, Canada
Date Posted: 05/29/2012
Views: 1
Text from the cairn and marker plaque that marks the former townsite:
Site of Old Duhamel
1878 - 1910
First known as Laboucane Settlement in 1878,
Mission established by Father Bellavaire in
1881. Named after Bishop Duhamel of Ottawa,
who donated church bell. Francois Adam
founded a fur trading post and post-office
in 1892 - Only one between Edmonton and
Battleford Saskatchewan, this grew to a thriving village.
Site of G.T.P. railway wooden trestle over
1/2 mile long and 120 ft high, 1910 - 1923
Erected by Duhamel Historical Society - 1967
A nearby Alberta Heritage sign also describes Duhamel and the railway trestle as follows:
"The Duhamel Trestle Bridge
Railway fever was a common ailment in Alberta in the first part of the twentieth century. The only cure for the fevers and chills brought on by rumours that a railway line was soon to be built through your community was if one actually was!
For the inhabitants of the tiny hamlet of Duhamel, their cure came in 1909 when the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway announced it would build a bridge across the Battle River near here. When it became clear the bridge was scheduled to meet the south side of the river bank right on the site of the hamlet, the inhabitants happily established a new town further south.
In the fall of 1909, a magnificent wooden trestle bridge began to creep across the valley. Almost 4000 feet long and 120 feet high, it arced in a great sweep from river bank to river bank. At times, 120 men were working on the bridge. Others, some of them farmers using their horses and wagons, hauled the raw timbers from where the railway deposited them in Camrose to the bridge site to be cut to size. Still others hauled the cut timbers out into the valley to the construction site.
The bridge stood only 14 years before it fell victim to railway consolidation. The great structure was dismantled, its huge timbers salvaged for building and repairing other bridges. The river valley near Duhamel again stood quiet, no longer a host to the thundering racket of the iron horse."