Magrath: The Garden City - Magrath, Alberta
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T0SHEA
N 49° 24.963 W 112° 52.099
12U E 364491 N 5475386
Magrath: The Garden City welcome sign is at the corner of W. Civic Avenue and S. 1st Street West. The Magrath Civic building is at this location.
Waymark Code: WMXQ1G
Location: Alberta, Canada
Date Posted: 02/11/2018
Views: 2
Magrath is in Cardston County, Alberta, Canada and was first settled by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from Utah and Idaho in 1899. Magrath has a current population of approximately 2,374 residents, and is a rural community still surrounded by farmland.
Magrath, Alberta
Magrath is one of two settlements whose origins are tied to the construction of the Galt Canal. In 1898 the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints entered into a contract with the Alberta Irrigation Company, which called for the Church to provide labour to construct the Galt Canal and to develop two villages of 250 persons each.
After the contract was signed, Charles 0. Card, founder of Cardston, Alberta, travelled throughout Utah encouraging Latter-day Saints to move to Southern Alberta. Through pamphlets and articles in a major Salt Lake City newspaper, Card encouraged those "Saints who desire Good Places to make Comfortable homes" to emigrate. To ensure that the Church met its contractual obligations, the First Presidency called men and their families to Canada to assist with building the canal and settling the designated communities. On April 20, 1899, Charles Heber Dudley arrived in Magrath as the first permanent settler. Within a few months, a number of homes, a tithing barn, and other structures were completed.
The development of Magrath followed the pattern long used by the Latter-day Saints in establishing a community. The village layout was based on Joseph Smith's concept of the "plat of the City of Zion." Unusually wide streets arranged in a grid pattern oriented toward the cardinal points of the compass characterize Magrath as a significant example of a Latter-day Saint agricultural village.
Placed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2012
Transcribed from sign
The Garden City
Magrath is known as “The Garden City” for several reasons: its natural garden-like setting along Pothole creek; its tree lined streets and well-tended gardens; it unique origin and layout as a religiously-based utopian new community; and its similarities with the contemporaneous “Garden City” new town movement in England. Closeness to nature was a key feature of the Garden City movement. Magrath and the Galt Canal were established in 1899 with funds largely raised in England. The first English “Garden City” was established in 1903.
Transcribed from sign