The Telegraph

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Old Humboldt was located eight km southwest of modern Humboldt in the SW 1/4 of Section 16, Township 37, Range 23, West of 2nd. Within this small area are numerous features which played an important role in the history of Saskatchewan.

- the original Dominion Telegraph Line of 1876 to eastern Canada via FortPelly/Swan River, which was relocated in 1883 south of Humboldt to join the CPR line at Qu’Appelle
- Old Humboldt, the original Humboldt telegraph station complex of 1878 to 1885, also served as a mail/stage station until the late 1880s
- Middleton’s termporary camp of April, 1885 established on his march to confront Riel’s forces at Batoche
- Fort Denison, the garrison occupied by the Governor General’s Body Guars which served as a transshipment depot and communications centre during the Riel Rebellion of 1885
- the camp of white Cap and his band, the Sioux leader taken prisoner by Denison’s troops

The original telegraph station lay on the well known Carlton Trail, the route linking Red River and Edmonton. Of all such stations in the west, Humboldt was the one most mentioned by early travellers because of the hospitality and personality of the first operators, George and Catherine Weldon.

George Weldon, who had been hired as lineman, began patrols along the line west of Fort Pelly on April 17,1878. That summer, on August 18, Weldon began building the house at what was to be known as the first Humboldt Telegraph Station. With him were his wife Catherine, who was the first female telegraph operator in the west, their daughter "Birdie" and Catherine's sister, Margaret Ligget. Apparently, the home and station were combined in one building.

The first telegraph message datelined Humboldt was sent a week later on August 25, 1878 (Markwell 1931). Work on the house progressed slowly, perhaps because of Weldon's line duties:

Aug 18 - We commence building our house
Aug 31 - Top gables on house up
Sept 11 - ... mudding the house
Sept 27 - We move into our house and know how to appreciate a house and home, be it ever so humble
Oct 11 - Put up a bedstead, Have not slept on one since March (Markwell 1931)

A year after the station was built, Rev. Arthur Whiteside passed on his way to Edmonton. Weldon, his wife, sister and child were the only white folk living, I suppose, between Fort Clive and Fort Carlton. [Humboldt was] a log structure, one story, neat and tidy as a new pin inside... [Weldon's] difficulties in house building are apparent; when he had to bring his boards from Battleford for the floors and the water for the plaster a distance of seven miles and driving twice a day. The logs are poplar wood, poor quality for that purpose, yet they have made quite a comfortable place. They dug a well eleven feet and struck water, not clear and not cold, hard! Very hard, yet not bad tasting. (Whiteside 1879: August 14)

Years later, Senator O. Davis remembered his trip made in the fall of 1880:

"After we got to Humboldt we struck the old telegraph station on the edge of the plain [Salt Plains] about five miles west of the present town of Humboldt.... When we got to this place we found a large shanty on the edge of the bush. There was a man there by the name of Weldon. He and his wife and his wife's sister were living there. His wife was the operator and the husband was the repairer of the line. We met Jack Leittell [who] was in charge of the line there (Hawkes 1924: 1004)."

During the summer of 1881, the Governor General of Canada, the Marquis of Lorne, toured the West with a party of 46 troops of the NWMP, as well as the numerous persons in his own party (Chambers 1973: 68). Because he was son in law to Queen Victoria, his trip attracted much publicity. An article later published in the London Graphic and dated August 23, 1881 described the station:

"Humboldt contains two houses (the nearest house is 60 miles away) and a population of I believe, four persons, and has some right to be proud of being not only a telegraph but also a meteorological station with an anemometer, barometer, and two thermometers. We found two ladies here [Catherine and her sister Margaret] ... [the] house has been built of wood got close at hand, and it seems a sufficiently good one (McAfee 1931). "

An artist accompanying the Governor General's tour of 1881 sketched the first picture of the station (Figure 7; Telfer 1975: 26). Margaret Liggett "was indignant with Mr. Hall for having sketched it so true instead of making something nice out of it" (McAfee 1931 n.p.).

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There had been problems with the Humboldt station. In mid September, 1883, Superintendent F. N.. Grisborne, of the Telegraph and Signal Service, visited Humboldt which he later reported is at present in a log hut which belongs to the mail contractors who now require it for their own service and it will be necessary to erect a small station house two or three miles south of its present position, where good water and wood are abundant (Macdonald 1930: 48).

Just when and under what conditions, the original telegraph station came into the possession of the unnamed mail contractors is not known. Elsewhere telegraph operators are known to have taken on the dual role of postmaster to augment meagre salaries (Macdonald 1930:31).

On October 25, 1883, A.C. Talbot, a Dominion Land Surveyor, was hired to determine a new location for the station on the NE 1/4 of 23-36-23 W 2nd (Telfer 1975:48).

The old telegraph station was still operating in December, 1884 when Donkin stopped over, but the new station to the south had been built by the time he returned in September, 1885. The move had taken place by March 22, 1885 when Commissioner A..G. Irvine of the NWMP sent a telegram from Humboldt: "Arrived here 4:30 this afternoon. Camp tonight at Stage Station, six miles further on" (Irvine 1973: 23).

The most famous military party to stay at Humboldt was that of General Middleton whose combined camp of April 13 - 15, 1885 totalled some 950 men plus teamsters (Adam 1885: 285). At the time, Humboldt was crucial since the line further west was periodically cut so Humboldt was the only direct link to the east (Miller 1969: 91, 94).

By then, the telegraph station had been relocated 8 km (5 miles) to the south, on the Carlton Trail near Wolverine Creek.

Middleton (1948: 23, 25) gives no details of the exact location of his camp which might have been at either the new or the old station:

"... we halted at Humboldt after doing twenty one miles. The trail bifurcates here, one going direct to Batoche or Prince Albert, the other to Clarke's Crossing. There was a telegraph station and two or three houses. "

However, the camp appears to have been in the vicinity of Old Humboldt judging from a private letter from W. H. Caniff to his father, dated Headquarters, 14 April, 1885:

"Yesterday, Monday, we journeyed 27 miles and came to this place the first place of habitation save a telegraph station, a few miles away. We are all resting today (Anonymous n.d.: 16)."

Caniff was apparently at the stage station at Old Humboldt, rather than the new telegraph station.

From May 1 until July 9, 1885, Humboldt was the site of a large supply depot under Maj. Lt. Col. G. T. Denison of the Governor General's Body Guard. His troops originally consisted of 84 officers and men (Boulton 1886: 516) as well as the teamsters manning the numerous freight hauls. Because of the importance of the depot and possible danger from its proximity to Batoche, the "York and Simcoe Rangers" under Lieut. Col. W. E. O'Brien were ordered to move from Qu'Appelle. This additional force of 376 officers and men arrived in mid May (Boulton 1886: 516 518).

Supposedly, this combined force of some 460 men remained at Humboldt the entire time until July 9 when they returned east. However, there is no documentation for such a large camp while a contemporary account of the depot, quoted below, describes a much smaller camp of 10 or 16 tents with 10 men each (Canadian Pictorial & Illustrated War News 1885: 86). Nevertheless, when Denison left for the east in July he implied that the troops still consisted of entire combined force: "the column consisted of the Body Guard and the provisional battalion, made up from the 12th York Rangers and the 35th Simcoe Foresters" (Denison 1900: 322).

Although Denison is vague about the location of the camp, he describes its layout in some detail. With "all the stores that were pouring in every day" and with "an open rolling prairie, open for miles to the north in the direction of the enemy ... about fifty five miles away," Denison decided that the large quantity of goods "at this post" must be relocated while defensive works were necessary if they were to be adequately defended .

" I went out on to the open rolling prairie, and about six hundred yards from the station I found two knolls or bits of rising ground, close together, about eight feet high, with a dip between them. On the higher or larger knoll I pitched my camp and in the dip I placed my picket ropes and fastened my horses...

I began the first night to dig rifle pits to shelter the men; I kept enlarging and connecting them and deepening the ditches in front, until I had a fairly good little earthwork around my tents. On the other knoll, on the far side of the horses, I had a sort of lunette field entrenchment ... The stores were brought over and piled in a V-shaped pile, the point outward so that each face could be enfiladed by the fire from the other two works (1900: 284). "

The Humboldt station was crucial in communicating military news to the east. Often the line was down beyond Humboldt so Middleton and other government forces depended on couriers to carry messages to Humboldt, the nearest telegraphic link to the east. Denison writes "During those days, my time was principally spent in the telegraph station" (1900: 288).

Shortly after the battle at Batoche, Denison's patrol at Spatinow Hill (Mount Carmel) captured Wahisca, the brother of White Cap who was the leader of a Dakota or Sioux band. Denison then sent troops after White Cap himself, then aged 72 years, who was camped near Dead Moose Lake with twenty followers (Adam 1885: 369). The small band was brought back to Fort Denison where they were held for eight weeks (Denison 1900: 309 -310). White Cap was later taken to trial in Regina where he was acquitted of treason (Bear and Macleod 1984: 327 - 330).

According to the recent history of Humboldt, the NWMP had established a post in the area although its location is not clear:

" A two or three man detachment was stationed at Humboldt in the years 1885 and 1886 to protect the telegraph line and to escort the mail... The detachment was closed in 1887 and was not reopened until 1905... (Humboldt Journal 1982: 140 - 141).

So far, no descriptions of the Humboldt area have been located between the early summer of 1885 and the establishment of the present town in 1904. "

After 1885, few travellers wrote accounts of their travels on the old trail. The only description of the new telegraph station at Wolverine Creek that can be located is by Donkin, who passed by on his way south in September, 1885. He describes the changes since his visit of the previous December:

"... we passed the old mail station at Humboldt, where I had endured such an uncomfortable night in the proceeding December. The ground was worn bare with traffic all around, and bottles, preserved meat tins, ancient forage caps and other martial relics denoted the spot where the Quebec (regular) cavalry had been encamped. All was deserted now, and left to the nocturnal prowling of wolves.

A large frame house, painted green, stood on the verge of the forest to the right of the trail, two miles ahead. This was the new telegraph and mail station, and here existed the operator and his family (Donkin 1987: 172)."

It was apparently this last house, or its replacement, which was visited in May 1903 by a group of Benedictines travelling from Rosthern:

"... they came to Humboldt Station, used formerly as a telegraph station, a short distance south of the spot where Humboldt now stands, and found a fairly large house, but, uninhabited and in a most desolate condition without doors, the floors covered with straw a prey to all kinds of insects... The following morning they finally reached Wolverine Creek (Windschiegl 1953:15). "

With the evacuation of troops in the summer of 1885, and the abandonment of the Carlton Trail in lieu of the Canadian Pacific Railway to the south and steamship travel on both the North and South Saskatchewan rivers, Old Humboldt sank into obscurity. Travel on the trail ceased after the railway reached Saskatoon and Prince Albert in the early 1890s.