On September 24, 1899, Karl wrote a letter to sister Mattie from Lethbridge, Alberta on The Hotel Lethbridge stationary. The stationary included a photo of the hotel and advertised it as being “strictly first-class” offering rates of $2 per day from the Proprietors Henderson & Downer.
When Karl was in Lethbridge, it was a mining town and the largest coal producer in what then known as the North-West Territories. Lethbridge was the Coal City in the Wheat Country, with 100 mines operating at one point between 1965 and 1974. This natural resource was critical to fuel those steam engines travelling across the Canadian Pacific Railway. The railway was also an opportunity to provide safe and more efficient means of shipping coal.
Consequently, the opportunity to expand the network for coal distribution led CPR to construct a new route to Fort McLeod, Alberta. This route required the construction of a new bridge. The CPR/Lethbridge trestle bridge is the longest and highest of its type in the world. At 1624 metres (5328 feet) long and 96 metres (314 feet tall). In 2005, the Canadian federal government designated the 1909 completion of this bridge as a “National Historic Event”.
It was undoubtedly an excellent place to take some photographs:
As for Karl, he was ten years too early to see the trestle bridge. Instead, he focused more on responding to Mattie’s last letter. In his correspondence, he addressed some local gossip, shared that he could now see the Rocky Mountains, and acknowledged the change in his body due to muscle gain from all that biking.
Dear Mattie;
I am doing a stroke of better writing today and writing to the whole family except Ma and wrote hers yesterday. I received your letter at Medicine Hat and was more than pleased to get it needless to say.
I never wrote to town folks and never found time. Fergie and Syd are talking through their hats.
This is the worst country for writing letters, I never get sight of any writing paper scarcely I had to buy a tablet the other day but did not use any of it yet.
I came in sight of the “Rockies” last evening or yesterday afternoon, 20 miles east of here and it is still 60 miles yet to the foot of them making 80 miles they looked like great clouds, so high were they and will be in there Wednesday all right, so I will see some sights there won’t I?!
Those boys at your class you spoke about must be very tall if they are as tall as me. I am a good deal stouter now than I was when I left home. When I get those britches at Vancouver, I’d scarcely be able to get into them but I’ll buy anyhow. That last letter was mixed up, yours, Ma’s, Pa’s and Minerva’s also Herberts but I read them all.
Yours Karl Creelman
Next week we'll go to Fort McLeod, the town that became more accessible thanks to that Lethbridge trestle bridge.
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