Bar U Ranch Invites Us for Lunch

The Bar U Ranch is the only National Historic Site in Canada that commemorates the history of ranching. By 1890, eight years after first herds of cattle were driven from Idaho, USA, the North West Cattle Company reported 10,410 cattle and 832 horses. The NWCC livestock, branded with the Bar U brand, grazed on the native fescue grasses of the company’s extensive lease land. On a seasonal basis for nearly 4,000 years, Native people occupied the area on and around what was to become the Bar U Ranch headquarters.

On the 31-st of July we headed for the Alberta foothills. Passing by beautiful canola fields, small towns Turner Valley, Black Diamond, Longview we came to the Bar U Ranch where are well remembered the names of Pat Burns, George Lane, A.E. Cross, Archie McLean, the Big Four, who financed the 1912 first ever Calgary Stampede to help Guy Weadick to produce a “Frontier Celebration and World Championship Cowboy Contest”.

Bar U Percherons are superb draft horses which won almost every event entered at the World’s Fair in Seatle. We looked around Stud Horse Barn,Ranch Post Office, Cookhouse, Blacksmith Shop, Saddle Horse Barn, Round-up Camp, taking pictures everywhere and finishing up with a handsome wagon ride around the ranch and eating a delicious home made mushroom soup at the ranch restaurant.

The scatted photos are showing lots of interesting staff around plus we prepared as usual a photo show “Bar U Ranch” as a remarkable memento of ours.