Bowell Station

On the Prairies, the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway proceeded so quickly that the station builders were frequently unable to keep up. They used portable structures, such as this one, as temporary stations for the hamlets, villages and towns on the line.

Even Calgary, already a prosperous town when the CPR arrived there in 1883, originally had a train station much like this one. The CPR unloaded this pre-fabricated station from a flatcar and placed it next to the tracks near the hamlet of Bowell, just northwest of Medicine Hat, on the CPR main line in 1909. Like many small settlements, Bowell never grew large enough to justify the construction of a bigger station, and eventually the CPR closed it. In 1964, the CPR gave the station to Heritage Park, where it was converted into a washroom.