Maybutt, Alberta: Difference between revisions

Ghost Town of Maybutt
Ghost Town
Sun setting on Maybutt. Sun setting on Maybutt.
Country	Canada
Province	Alberta
Region	Southern Alberta
Census division	2
County	Warner
Founded	1910
Government
• Mayor	Larry Nilsson
• Manager	Bob Jones
• Governing body	Warner County Council
• MP	Rick Casson
• MLA	Broyce Jacobs
Elevation	935 m (3,068 ft)
Population  (1920)
• Total	250
Time zone	UTC-7 (MST)
Postal code span	TOK 2EO
Area code	+1-403
Highways	Highway 4 Highway 61
Waterways	Etzikom Coulee Stirling Lake Milk River Ridge Reservoir

Maybutt was once a Hamlet of 250 people, and was located in southern Alberta, Canada. It was situated 1 km north of Stirling on a major highway between Lethbridge and the United States-Canada border.

Around 1899, the first LDS settlers arrived and planned out the former town site of Stirling. At the time, Alberta Rail and Irrigation ran a narrow gauge line diagonally from Lethbridge to Stirling and then to Coutts. The Canadian Pacific Railway later bought the rail line and needed extra space for a junction point for the line between Raymond and Foremost. This junction was named New Stirling. In 1912, New Stirling’s name was changed to Maybutt, after Mr. William Fisher’s wife. Mr. Fisher was the original owner of the town site of Maybutt and the first owner of the Prairie Queen Hotel.

At one point, Maybutt had many of the amenities of a large town. It had a three-storey hotel with a restaurant, a livery stable, a Union Bank of Canada branch, a two-storey boarding house, two general stores, a dry business, a lumber yard, three grain elevators, a flour mill, a Presbyterian and late United Church, some CPR section homes for rail maintenance, the Apiary and Superior Honey Factory, a warehouse, a Chinese laundry and restaurant, a newspaper called the Stirling Star, a resident North West Mounted Police, and the International Harvest Machine Company.

All that remains are a few houses, a grain elevator and vacant buildings. During the Dust Bowl era of the 1930s, residents left Maybutt and Stirling. Stirling’s population had dipped from about 600 residents to a low of 366 in 1926, while Maybutt was never large enough to incorporate as a village[1]. Stirling has since grown to 951 people.

The Prairie Queen Hotel was a big three storey brick veneered building that had boasted 50 rooms with a well furnished parlor, large lobby, dining room and a large room for a bar-room, all containing electric lights and steam heating. The Prairie Queen Hotel was known as one of the best hotels west of Winnipeg. The hotel was also known as the largest hotel ever built in a new town in Western Canada. After many years of ups and downs the building was set for demolition, as the demolition crew were dismantling the third floor a company of Montana men had an interest in buying the building and using it for a guest house, but the deal was not carried out, and the deal fell through. Shortly after the land company did the same thing. The building now became part of a bankrupt estate, and ended up reverting into a bank. The building was again made habitable and turned back into a hotel, the bar room that was never used as one, was turned into a bank and a residence, as well as a school room.

In 1927 the owner had died and the hotel was once again closed. Shortly after in 1932 the 20 year old hotel was bought once again and was slowly dismantled so that the material would be used to build a grocery store and pool hall in Magrath.

• List of places with fewer than ten residents
• List of communities in Alberta
• Hamlets of Alberta
• Ghost Towns in Alberta
• Stirling