Minnedosa, Manitoba

History

Prior to the arrival of Europeans in the area of Minnedosa, the land was primarily traveled and used by the nomadic Ojibway, Cree, Assiniboine, and Sioux peoples. John Tanner was the grandson of John Tanner who had been raised by a Shawnee. He was an American settler who arrived in the area in 1869. The younger Tanner was the first Métis settler in the area and ran a ferry service across the Little Saskatchewan River. When a bridge was built in 1879, the ferry became obsolete and at the same time, a small town, Tanner's Crossing, was started nearby. John Armitage moved to the area around this time in 1877, and began to build a sawmill and gristmill. He joined together with Tanner to lay out a new town site and eventually Armitage had accumulated 3,800 acres (15 km²) of property. Tanner named the new town Minnedosa, from the Dakota word mnidúza meaning "flowing water".

Although Minnedosa once hoped to be a site of a river crossing for the Canadian Pacific Railway's transcontinental railway. The honour was initially given to Rapid City, while the actual site of the railway was later settled on a site much further south creating the city of Brandon. In 1883 Minnedosa was incorporated as a town, it had experienced a period of growth from settlement schemes put forth by the Canadian government. As Minnedosa became a town, this coincided with the actual arrival of the railway in 1883, bringing about more growth for the now quickly growing settlement.

A dam was proposed in 1907 and approved in December of the same year by the Government of Canada. It was built on the Little Saskatchewan River near the town. After several delays, the dam was completed in 1912, creating Minnedosa Lake. Water first flowed over the spillway on April 10, 1912. Minnedosa was the second community in the Province of Manitoba to generate its own hydroelectric power. An earlier project in 1900 was also on the Minnedosa River and supplied power to the town of Brandon, Manitoba. Initially privately owned, the generation plant was taken over by the Manitoba Power Commission in 1920 and replaced by a diesel generation plant and by 1930, power from the provincial grid. The lake was used as a source of water for the town, for recreation, and for supplying the engines of the Canadian Pacific Railway. On May 4, 1948 the spillway of the dam failed due to erosion of structure, and the resulting flood damaged many homes and businesses in the town. The spillway was not repaired until 1950 by the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration.

Since 1981 the Minnedosa Ethanol Plant has been producing ethanol to be blended into gasoline, as of late 2007 it has been expanded into one of the largest ethanol facilities in Canada. This plant is owned and operated by Husky Energy.

Minnedosa is home to the baseball team the Minnedosa Mavericks. This local AA baseball team has won the league championship for nine consecutive years up to date. They are looking to make it 10 in a row this August.

Climate

Minnedosa has a humid continental climate (Köppen dfb) typical of southern Manitoba. As a result of its far inland position at a relatively high latitude, winters are extremely cold with a January mean of below −17 °C (1 °F). In the relatively short summers Minnedosa experiences warm and sometimes hot temperatures due to warmer continental air masses. It is prone to cold nights year-round, with every single month having recorded air frost.

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