Summer student Mary is just finishing up her project reorganising the 717 maps in the Archives' collection. I took a couple of photos of one that I really like, even though it really doesn't have anything to do with Creston (we have a few things like that in the collection!).



It's a map, dated 1911, showing all the grain elevators across the Prairies, along with the rail lines connecting them.  Here's a section in southern Manitoba, including the one at Baldur that my great-grandfather would have been running right about the time the map was made:



Look at them all! And an absolute maze of railway lines linking them - four different ones, including the Great Northern Railway popping up across the border every now and then. Compare southern Manitboa to this section, of southern Alberta:



Pretty sparse in comparison, isn't it? But wouldn't it be interesting to compare the 1911 map to one made today, when grain elevators are rapidly disappearing from the west?  What a difference a century makes!