Bucket Line Dredge - Magrath, AB - Preserved Machines on Public Display on Waymarking.com

The Erd Motor Company, Ltd. was a marine engine manufacturer located at 1357-1363 N. Niagara, Saginaw, Saginaw County, Michigan. John G. Erd and Harry S. Erd were the principals of the firm. The company emerged out of the former Erd Machine Company. By 1906 the company was in the process of increasing the size of its plant and was installing new machine tools. An article in Motor Boat in December 1905 stated that the company would be building motors ranging in size from 1 to 20 horsepower, using jigs and templates to assure the interchangeability of parts. At the same time, the company also planned to bring out a 16-foot launch equipped with a 1- ½ h.p. motor, selling for $125 and with an estimated speed of 8 miles per hour. The motor weighed 65 lbs and sold separately for $50.00.

The firm was incorporated in March 1909 with a capital of $25,000. Erd Motor Company of Saginaw, Michigan filed notice of its dissolution on January 19, 1923.
From Old Marine Engines

Horse drawn wheel and slip scrapers were used to construct the original canal. This Bucket Line Dredge was used along the canal from the 1920s to the mid-1960s.

---

Floating Dredge. A large floating dredge once plied this waterway from the headgates to the canal bridge just east of Gumbo Point. This floating dredge was steam powered. It had an attached cabin and carried a Chinese cook. It travelled from the Headgates to George Gunning's land short of Welling. The dredge travelled east of the canal bridge by lifting the bridge timbers to pass and then replacing them. This dredge and one at Kimball were scrapped and sent to Japan just prior to World War II.

Prior to the 1890s, much of southern Alberta had been perceived as unsuitable for agricultural settlement. Enclosed within "Palliser's Triangle" - an arid expanse in the southern Canadian Prairies - the region had been largely avoided by settlers convinced of its dubious farming possibilities. This dreary vision was of particular concern to Elliott Galt, whose companies had amassed vast land subsidies in the area in return for constructing railway lines.

In the 1890s, Galt and his associate A. C. Magrath of the Alberta Irrigation Company (later the Canadian North-West Irrigation Company) spearheaded the St. Mary River Project to address the problem of aridity in southern Alberta. Galt succeeded in securing the support of the federal government, the Mormon community, and British investors for the project. The government agreed to offer a rebate on the surveying fees associated with the endeavor in order to encourage settlement in an otherwise unattractive region. The Mormons offered their labor and their considerable expertise on irrigation - cultivated through years of "making the desert bloom" in Utah - in exchange for land and cash payments. And the financiers agreed to provide capital in the hopes of substantial returns.

Begun in 1898, the St. Mary River Project was completed in 1900. As a result of this happy confluence of interests, vast tracts of southern Alberta were made viable for agriculture and settlement. The St. Mary River Project, of which the Magrath Canal was a part, was the first major irrigation project undertaken in Alberta and was essential in transforming the image of southern Alberta from a dry, desolate land unsuitable for agriculture to a region made fruitful by irrigation. The establishment of the communities of Magrath, Raymond, and Stirling was directly linked to the project.
From the CNHS plaque at the site