The timeline of Edmonton history is a chronology of significant events in the history of Edmonton, Alberta.
Pre-European period
Indigenous peoples roamed Alberta for thousands of years, or even tens of thousands of years. The rim of the river valley and its ravines and hilltops in Edmonton are known to have been well-used as campgrounds and look-out points during this time. Rabbit Hill, today's Mary Lobay Park, Mount Pleasant Cemetery and Huntington Heights (near Whitemud Drive west of Calgary Trail) are known to be sites of human activity for millennia.[citation needed]
1812 – Fort Edmonton (Hudson's Bay Company) moved to Rossdale, never again to move out of today's Edmonton.[3]
1821 the North West Company and the Hudson's Bay Company merged, and fur-trade activities became concentrated in Fort Edmonton.
1830 – Fort Edmonton moved up the hill, to near today's legislative building.
1870 – Fort Edmonton and environs becomes part of Canada and of the North-West Territories
1871 – The first prominent buildings outside the walls of Fort Edmonton, a Methodist church mission building and manse, built by George McDougall and his family. They added mix to the existing log cabins of gold prospectors and frontier farmers and hunters, Indigenous, European and Métis, who lived in the bush where City of Edmonton sits today.
1874 - North-West Mounted Police arrive. Second Patrol, a spin-off of the main March West, arrived in exhausted dribs and drabs Oct. 29-Nov. 2
1876 – Treaty 6 is signed by representatives of the Queen and local Native leaders. Title to the Fort Edmonton region is ceded to the Crown, excepting promised Indian reserves, Enoch and Papaschase. (The Papaschase reserve, on the site of Mill Woods, was never established.)[4]
Second McDougall Church was built at site of first church. (Now at Fort Edmonton Park)
Edmonton incorporated as a town with a population of 700.[7]
1896 - Edmonton pioneer, newspaperman and NWT Council member Frank Oliver elected as MP for Alberta.[8]
1897 – Edmonton was a starting point for people making the trek overland to the Klondike Gold Rush. Nearby South Edmonton (Strathcona) was the northernmost railway point on the western Prairies. (But Edmonton was still about 3000 kilometres from the goldfields.)
Edmonton amalgamated with the city of Strathcona, a city since 1907, south of the North Saskatchewan River; as a result, the city extended south of the river.
High Level Bridge opened. It carried a CPR rail-line and streetcar lines as well as a road for private vehicles (both horse-drawn and gas-fueled) and sidewalks for pedestrians.
Edmonton economy collapses. Land in the Hudson Bay Co reserve was put on the market and sold, with the money raised by the sales going to HBC headquarters out of the province. British investment dried up as Europe invested in military preparation for the coming war. This all caused real estate prices to drop. With the start of World War I, the city's population declined, going from 72,000 in 1914 to under 54,000 in only two years, people leaving to eke out existence on farms, or off to war, or to other centres.[7]
The Hotel Macdonald in downtown Edmonton
1914
Vote held on street naming system (following amalgamation of Strathcona and Edmonton, each with their own systems) Numerical numbering (centred on Jasper Avenue and 101 Street) got 2099 votes; "Edmonscona" scheme (a mixed number-name system) got 1471 votes.[11]
CJCA begins broadcasting as city's first radio station.
Edmonton Grads win the Canadian Basketball Championship. The team wins this competition each year from 1922 to 1940.
Edmonton Elks football team, owned by local Elks society, scored touchdowns. The team was later named the Edmonton Eskimos (and has now returned to its earlier name).[12][circular reference][13][circular reference]
1947 – The first major oil discovery in Alberta was made near the town of Leduc, south of Edmonton.[16]
1940s and 1950s – The subsequent oil boom gave Edmonton new status as the "Oil Capital of Canada", and during the 1950s, the city increased in population from 149,000 to 269,000.[7] After a relatively calm but still prosperous period in the 1960s, the city's growth took on renewed vigour concomitant with high world oil prices, triggered by the 1973 oil crisis and the 1979 Iranian Revolution. The oil boom of the 1970s and 1980s ended abruptly with the sharp decline in oil prices on the international market and the introduction of the National Energy Program in 1981; that same year, the population had reached 521,000.[7]
1942 – A record-breaking snowfall of 39.9 centimetres hits Edmonton on November 15.
1980s – Although the National Energy Program was later scrapped by the federal government, the collapse of world oil prices in 1986 and massive government cutbacks kept the city from making a full economic recovery until the late 1990s.[17]
The path taken by the F4 Edmonton tornado in 1987. The F numbers are for the Fujita values, the O is for Imperial Oil Strathcona and Petro-Canada refineries, P is the Edmonton Power Clover power station and C is for the Celanese Canada chemical plant.
Largest residential fire in Edmonton's history burns down a 149 unit condominium complex, which was under construction, along with 18 duplexes. Causing $20 million in damages.[20]
2008 – Edmonton region population surpasses one million becoming the most northern city in North America with a population over one million.
Anthony Henday Drive is officially completed with the opening of its northeast section, including two new bridges over the river, on October 1.[27] It is the furthest north ring road in North America.[citation needed]
