Chapter 38

About the era of 1950 the Provincial Government considered an irrigation scheme for the Bow Island and Seven Persons parts of this rural area. In 1953 the St. Mary's River Development built a huge reservoir on the St. Mary's River, and smaller dams along the route, to give water for irrigation from Taber to Dunmore. The Seven Persons Dam, the Rattlesnake Dam and the Murray Reservoir were constructed to particularly service the farms at Seven Persons. What a transformation has been made! Again all the land is inhabited. The fields are green and productive in the growing season. Crops can be grown independent of rainfall. Each farmstead can be beautified by the addition of trees, flowers and gardens.

Old farms that had long been vacated and had been reclaimed by the government for tax arrears were sold at this time to new settlers such as Peter Biemans, Abe Bergen, Abe Dyck, Nick de Jong and Joe Van Ooyen, Nick Jenkins, the Gechter brothers, Wallace Mayer,Tony Debler, Ray Neufeld, Rudy Neufeld, Ernie Nickel, Nick Melnick, Mike Aberle and Jim Zachary. These, their wives, families and others have become part of Seven Persons. They have used irrigation to make the land produce.

Return Seven Persons