The five successful businesses that called the Cochrane Ranche Historic site home will be honoured May 11 as the Cochrane Historical and Archival Preservation Society (CHAPS) unveils a cairn dedicated to the enterprises.
The dedication ceremony will begin at 2 p.m. Afterward, attendees are invited back to the CHAPS house — the Davies house/hospital at 516-2nd Street West — for tea and coffee.
The five ventures being recognized are: Collins Brickyard (1902-1925), the Shelley Stone Quarry (1910-1920s), Cochrane Creamery Ltd. (1912-1977), Beynon-Davies Dairy Farm (1914-1949) and Gilbert Ranches (1949-1977).
Descendants of the families connected to these businesses will be on hand for the dedication.
Each enterprise was developed on the property following the short venture of the Cochrane Ranche — Alberta’s first large-scale ranch.
“People are quite aware of the history of the Cochrane Ranche, but I’m not sure people are aware of what else was located on the site,” said Gordon Davies, president of CHAPS. “It’s important that people recognize that there were other enterprises on the site. The original ranch was only there for two years.”
Davies said each of the ventures were successful and important to Cochrane’s development:
Collins Brickyard provided a lot of work for Cochrane area residents, with much of the brick being shipped to Calgary.
The Shelley Stone Quarry operated year round, cutting out sandstone and shipping it to Calgary. In the 1900s, Calgary’s population was booming and bylaw required the downtown buildings be built with brick or sandstone.
Cochrane Creamery Ltd. served as a “life line for many people,” said Davies. During the Depression, selling cream was often the way families paid for necessities. Davis said it had a huge impact on the area.
Beynon-Davies Dairy Farm was a mixed-farming operation that established as a dairy farm and shipped milk to nearby Calgary. The farm sold its goods until the land was purchased and turned into Gilbert Ranches in 1949.
O.N. Gilbert brought the property back to its roots: ranching. The cattle would winter on land west of the town, but pregnant cows would be brought back to the site to calve in the spring. Gilbert Ranches remained at the site until 1977, when the land was sold to the Alberta Government and designated a historic site.
