From pulpwood to resorts: RM of Barrier Valley hits 100

A century ago, when the RM of Barrier Valley was first organized, it was a land of forests and swamps. Today, it’s mostly farmland, with a few resorts on the Barrier River system.

The RM celebrated June 17 with a celebration featuring a social, banquet and recognition of noteworthy people.

“100 years is a pretty major milestone. There isn’t that many organizations in this province that actually celebrate an 100th anniversary,” said Wayne Black, the RM’s reeve, a week before the event. “Anytime somebody reaches 100 years, it’s worth a celebration. That’s what we’re going to do.”

Because of the terrain, it was difficult for the first settlers to travel around the RM. They followed trails made by First Nations and carved out their own along the high ridges, building paths out of logs through the swamps when necessary. They would hunt to get food on the table.

The soil was rocky, making it hard to farm until new farming technology and techniques became available.

“Early, early days, most of the farmers tried to scratch a living off the land, but pulpwood was a major industry in the early years,” Black said. “For many families, cutting pulpwood was the only way of getting some cash to run their operations and feed their families.”

When the RM was formed, urban areas included Archerwill, Algrove, Barford and McKague. There was also a settlement at Dahlton, which was missed when the rail line came in a few years later.

“Dahlton actually moved the resources that they had into the Archerwill area and became a part of Archerwill because of the rail line,” Black said.

There was also another major impediment that made travel difficult for the settlers – the RM’s namesake, the Barrier River system.

“While it’s an attractive part of our municipality, it was an impediment for many years,” Black said “It was like we had almost two separate areas of the municipality because there was no easy way to get across.”

For many years, until the end of the Second World War, the situation remained the same for the RM.

“When the soldiers came home from the war is when you can really see development start in the municipality,” Black said. “Machinery was becoming more prevalent at that time and, actually, you could start to see roads being built on road allowances, where they crossed the swamps and crossed the tough areas.”

Advancements in farm technology allowed farms to grow. They, at first, focused on livestock before switching to grain. There were grain elevators in McKague and Archerwill.

In the last 1970s, the RM , together with the government, built the first bridge across the Barrier River that wasn’t on the highway, allowing farmers on the north side of the river to send grain and pick up products on the south side. It was at that point, Black said, the two sides of the RM became one.

“It really opened up a whole new era for the municipality.”

Like many rural areas, the RM had been hit by the migration of people into the larger towns and cities. The grain elevators are gone. There’s only one school, in Archerwill. There are no car or machinery dealerships anymore. The Archerwill Co-op is the mainstay for its namesake town. The only incorporated village left is Archerwill.

“We’ve gone from a lot of communities to basically one left and it’s startling,” Black said.

Yet in the last few years, the RM has seen a lot of resort development along Barrier River and Barrier Lake.

“A lot of our growing tax base, for the most part, comes from the resort areas,” Black said. “People are building not just cabins but homes on the Barrier River, Barrier Lake area and, of course, that helps the municipality from tax revenue.”

That’s important in a RM that has a small tax base, yet is required to provide the same type of services as RMs with larger tax bases. The reeve said the resorts require different services than the rest of the RM, but that’s something they are working to provide.