Eastend is a town in south-west part of the

Canadian province Canada has ten provinces and three territories that are sub-national administrative divisions under the jurisdiction of the Constitution of Canada, Canadian Constitution. In the 1867 Canadian Confederation, three provinces of British North Amer ...

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada. It is bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and to the south by the ...

, situated approximately north of the

Montana Montana ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota to the east, South Dakota to the southeast, Wyoming to the south, an ...

border and east of the

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

border. The town is best known for the nearby discovery of a ''

Tyrannosaurus rex ''Tyrannosaurus'' () is a genus of large theropoda, theropod dinosaur. The type species ''Tyrannosaurus rex'' ( meaning 'king' in Latin), often shortened to ''T. rex'' or colloquially t-rex, is one of the best represented theropods. It live ...

'' skeleton nicknamed "Scotty" in 1994. The town has used the discovery of this fossil as the main centrepiece in the construction of a museum called the ''

T.rex Discovery Centre The T.rex Discovery Centre is a natural history museum located in Eastend, Saskatchewan, Canada, and housed in a building designed by Stantec. The T.rex Discovery Centre was opened to the public in 2001, and was intended to house a number of fos ...

'', which opened on May 30, 2003. The centre is operated by the

Royal Saskatchewan Museum The Royal Saskatchewan Museum (RSM) is a Canadian natural history museum in Regina, Saskatchewan. Founded in 1906, it is the first museum in Saskatchewan and the first Provincial and territorial museums of Canada, provincial museum among the thr ...

, and contains the RSM Fossil Research Station. Eastend has been home to many famous residents, including the writer

Wallace Stegner Wallace Earle Stegner (February 18, 1909 – April 13, 1993) was an American novelist, writer, environmentalist, and historian. He was often called "The Dean of Western Writers". He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972 and the U.S. National Book Award ...

, who lived in the town between 1917 and 1921 and featured it as the village Whitemud in his book ''Wolf Willow''. Today, the former home of Stegner is used as an artists' retreat which can be rented out by artists to focus on their work.

History

The Eastend Area is rich in history and geology, and is rife with paleontological sites. A Métis settlement developed north of Eastend, and in the 1870s a

Hudson's Bay Company The Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), originally the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay, is a Canadian holding company of department stores, and the oldest corporation in North America. It was the owner of the ...

trading post was established in the region. In the mid 1880s as bison populations were being decimated on the eastern plains, the area became an important hunting ground that nearby First Nations tribes regularly fought over. The post only lasted one season, due to hostilities between the neighbouring tribes. Many years later, this site became known as Chimney Coulee — the name being derived from the remnants of stone chimneys that were once a part of Métis homes. In the late 1870s the

North-West Mounted Police The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was a Canadian paramilitary police force, established in 1873, to maintain order in the new Canadian North-West Territories (NWT) following the 1870 transfer of Rupert's Land and North-Western Territory to ...

established a satellite detachment of the

Fort Walsh Fort Walsh is a National Historic Site of Canada that was a North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) fort. Administered by Parks Canada, it forms a constituent part of Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park. The fort was built in June 1875 and was named ...

site in Chimney Coulee, and gave the area the name of "East End", due to its location on the East End of the Cypress Hills. When the Mounties moved to the nearby townsite years later, they condensed the name into one word, and the town was Christened "Eastend". The first ranch was established in the area in 1883, and a ranch house was built in the town in 1902, the community's first residence, which remains occupied to this day. Surveyors came to the area in 1905, a precursor to the expansion of the railway. In 1913, construction of the railway in the area began. Lumber was freighted from Gull Lake to Eastend until the railroad reached town in May, 1914. Many young people began coming to the townsite, and tents were placed across the river to accommodate them. J.C. Strong, the original owner of the townsite, donated land to build the first church, cemetery, and a lot for the first baby born in Eastend. She was born in June, 1914 and was named Eastena. On her 21st birthday she donated the lot given to her to the

United Church A united church, also called a uniting church, is a denomination formed from the merger or other form of church union of two or more different Protestantism, Protestant Christian denominations, a number of which come from separate and distinc ...

Flood of 1952

In the fall and winter of 1951 the town saw a record amount of snow. In the spring of 1952, unusually warm weather melted the snow quickly and caused a massive flood in Eastend. The town was evacuated and residents found refuge with friends and family that lived in nearby towns. The water receded after three days, leaving immense amounts of destruction in its wake. A few years later a dyke was constructed along the river to prevent history from repeating itself.

Discovery of "Scotty" the Tyrannosaurs Rex

On August 16, 1991, then high school teacher, Robert Gebhardt from Eastend joined local palaeontologists on a prospecting expedition to the exposed bedrock along the

Frenchman River The Frenchman River, (), also known locally as the Whitemud River, is a river in Saskatchewan, Canada and Montana, United States. It is a tributary of the Milk River, itself a tributary of the Missouri and, in turn, part of the Mississippi Riv ...

Valley to learn how fossils are found and identified in the field. Within a half a day, he discovered the base of a heavily worn tooth, and a vertebra from the tail, both suggesting that they belonged to a T. rex.

Geography

Eastend is located south-east of the Cypress Hills, east from Ravenscrag Butte and south from Anxiety Butte. It lies at an elevation of , in the valley of the Frenchman River. The Eastend Reservoir was built upstream from the community. The

Eastend Formation The Eastend Formation is a stratigraphical unit of Maastrichtian age in the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. It takes its name from the town of Eastend, Saskatchewan, and was first described in outcrop around the settlement by L.S. Russell in ...

, a stratigraphical unit of the

Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin The Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) underlies of Western Canada including southwestern Manitoba, southern Saskatchewan, Alberta, northeastern British Columbia and the southwest corner of the Northwest Territories. This vast sedimentary b ...

was named for the town and was first defined in outcrops close to the settlement. The Eastend Formation was the final marine deposit on the plains, and was home to many marine animals.

Demographics

In the

2021 Census of Population The 2021 Canadian census was a detailed enumeration of the Canadian population with a reference date of May 11, 2021. It follows the 2016 Canadian census, which recorded a population of 35,151,728. The overall response rate was 98%, which is sli ...

conducted by

Statistics Canada Statistics Canada (StatCan; ), formed in 1971, is the agency of the Government of Canada commissioned with producing statistics to help better understand Canada, its population, resources, economy, society, and culture. It is headquartered in ...

, Eastend had a population of living in of its total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of . With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.

Infrastructure

Highway 13 The following roads may be referred to as Route 13 or Highway 13. For a list of roads named A13, see List of A13 roads. International * AH13, Asian Highway 13 * European route E13 * European route E013 Afghanistan *The Kabul–Behsud Highwa ...

and Highway 614 intersect in Eastend. The

Great Western Railway The Great Western Railway (GWR) was a History of rail transport in Great Britain, British railway company that linked London with the southwest, west and West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, ...

(formerly the Altawan subdivision of the Canadian Pacific Railway) tracks also pass through the town.

Attractions

is a world class facility to house the fossil record of the Eastend area started many years before the discovery of "Scotty" the T.Rex in 1994. * The Eastend Community Swimming Pool was built in 1971, and remodelled in 2016. It now features a 25m outdoor swimming pool, a splash park, and two waterslides. * Jones Peak is located six miles south-west of Eastend. It was named after H.S. "Corky" Jones for his tireless work as an amateur paleontologist and in preserving the history of Eastend. * Streambank Golf Course, a 9-hole golf course located in town. * Pine Cree Regional Park

Notable residents

* Sharon Butala, Canadian author who resides on a ranch outside of Eastend

References

External links

* {{Authority control Towns in Saskatchewan White Valley No. 49, Saskatchewan Division No. 4, Saskatchewan