Fort Victoria

Fort Victoria is situated in Smoky Lake, Alberta, turned into established by means of the Hudson's Bay Company in 1864 on the North Saskatchewan River as a trading post with the nearby Cree First Nations. Today, it's miles a ancient museum known as Victoria Settlement. In 1864 George Flett became given the activity of commencing a Hudson's Bay Company buying and selling post in Fort Victoria. Flett and John Norris led the first brigade of Red River ox-carts from Winnipeg to Edmonton, taking three and 1/2 months on the journey. As clerk in rate of the publish, Flett become answerable for arranging for production of the homes and for establishing up exchange with the local Indians.

Flett became a success in quickly acquiring a supply of appropriate-great furs, which Flett and his assistants took by way of horse and dog train to Fort Edmonton. The oldest building in Alberta nevertheless on its original foundations is the clerk's quarters at Fort Victoria, which dates from 1865. Victoria positioned at the smoky Lake Saskatchewan River, downstream from Edmonton House on the manner to Fort Pitt, and also along the overland route among the two, a part of the Carlton Trail machine.

The fur buying and selling put up at Victoria turned into minor as compared to Edmonton but soon attracted a small agricultural settlement round itself just like that at different H.B.C. Posts at this time. Here land became divided inside the standard French river lot gadget and a mixed community of First Nations, Metis, and Europeans developed. For several miles on every facet of the present-day museum the river lot gadget continues to be in use, the farm right here predating the big, rectangular tracts of the Dominion Lands Act which surround them.