The Fascinating Story of Old Edmonton: From a Fur Fort to the Gateway of the North
Long before Edmonton became one of Canada’s major cities, it was a remote fur-trading outpost on the edge of a vast northern wilderness.
What began as Fort Edmonton — a Hudson’s Bay Company post along the North Saskatchewan River — slowly grew into a rough but ambitious settlement shaped by traders, Indigenous routes, river transport, railways, and waves of newcomers searching for opportunity in the West. By the early 20th century, Edmonton was changing at remarkable speed. Dirt roads became busy commercial streets, horse-drawn wagons shared space with streetcars, new banks and hotels rose along Jasper Avenue, and the arrival of the railway helped transform the city into an important transportation and supply centre.
Its location made Edmonton the natural starting point for people, goods, and industries moving farther north — eventually earning it the reputation as the “Gateway to the North.” But the story of Old Edmonton is more than a story of growth.
It is a story of how a frontier settlement reinvented itself again and again, surviving economic booms, harsh winters, fires, rapid immigration, and enormous changes to the Canadian West. In this documentary, we explore Edmonton’s journey from a lonely fur fort to a booming prairie city — the streets, buildings, people, and industries that shaped its early identity, and how the foundations of modern Edmonton were built long before the skyline we know today existed.
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