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Guess who's coming for dinner/ The sod house • The village of Beiseker, Alberta, Canada
March 28, 2010 • By Lorien

On our drive through the countryside on Sunday, we found ourselves in the village of Beiseker, located some 70 km northeast of Calgary. One of the things we found there was this sod house that was built in 2006 to commemorate the lives and hardship of the first settlers in the area.

From Wikipedia: "Since the area is rich with black soil, Beiseker was developed as an agricultural service centre. It was founded by the Calgary Colonization Company whose purpose was to promote settlement by demonstrating the grain growing potential of the area. The Village name comes from Thomas Beiseker, one of the

partners of the Company. Initial colonization took place in 1908 when the company recruited a number of ethnic German settlers from the Great Plains of the Dakotas. This is reflected in the number of German family names which predominate the area.

The Village began to grow in 1910 when the branch line of the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed. The Grand Trunk Pacific line - now owned by Canadian National Railway - was constructed in 1912 to the east of the Central Business district. Village status was achieved in 1921".

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