The Confluence
Canada · Americas
About
Fort Calgary was a North-West Mounted Police outpost at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers in present-day Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Originally named Fort Brisebois, after the outpost's first commander, the outpost was renamed Fort Calgary in June 1876.
The outpost was built in 1875 as a part of the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) larger effort to curtail American rum and whisky runners in the region, and to establish relationships with the Indigenous peoples of the territory. The palisades were removed in 1882 and the former fort was designated as a "district post". The NWMP used the expanded barracks there until 1914 when the site was sold to Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. The police buildings were demolished to make way for a rail terminal, although the site's significance was later recognized when it was named a National Historic Site in 1925.
In 1975, the municipal government of Calgary purchased a plot of land that included the National Historic Site and reopened it as Fort Calgary Historic Park in 1978. The historic park initially documented the NWMP role in the area, although its scope was expanded to focus on the Calgary's history in 1995. Reconstruction of several former buildings within Fort Calgary took place in the 1990s. In 2024, the Fort Calgary Historic Park was rebranded as The Confluence Historic Site and Parkland to better reflect the historical significance of the area.
Adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)。Photography via Wikimedia Commons.