Webster House

After entrepreneurial businessmen set up sawmills, a new kind of house began to be seen in the towns and villages of the Prairies. Frame houses made of sawn lumber took much less time and effort to build than their predecessors. Instead of collecting logs or cutting sod, all the materials necessary for a frame house could be purchased at a lumber mill, usually for less than $1,000.

This particular example of a milled-lumber house was built by Russell Alfred Webster in 1910 or 1911 on his homestead eight kilometres north of Cochrane, Alberta. More than three decades later, in 1945, B.V. Powlesland bought the Webster house and farm. He established the Rusticana Hereford Ranch on the property, and gave the house to Heritage Park in 1964.