Rowley, Alberta: The
Never Say Die Prairie Town—page 3
When James Clark's grocery store shut its doors in 1973, it was,
aside from the grain elevators, the last Rowley business to close.
There were a dozen or so residents left, and the post office and
community hall still served residents from Rowley and the
surrounding area. Money was raised to restore and convert the
railway station to a museum. In 1980, Sam's was reopened for a
town homecoming, but this time it wasn't a cafe, but "Sam's
Saloon."
Then in the mid-eighties, Rowley's rustic rural flavour caught the
attention of big-time moviemakers. Bye, Bye Blues, a Canadian
produced film, was shot in Rowley in 1988. For three months in the
summer, Rowley was converted into a movie set. Several of the
original buildings were used and others specially built. The
producers agreed to leave the newly constructed buildings after
their shoot. They still stand today.
The movie and its use of Rowley received wide attention in
Alberta. More and more people visited and, suddenly, the town was
on the brink of losing its ghost-town status. Rowley had a new
reason to exist—Tourism.
Rowley's community association received scores of requests to
use the community hall. Sam's Saloon was roaring with summer fun.
More film and commercial producers came after Bye, Bye Blues. The
area's cowboy flavour and barren locations appealed to moviemakers.
One American cigarette company even shot a commercial in Rowley
because of its wintry resemblance to Siberia.
But more challenges followed Rowley's sudden sharp rise to
prominence. The
grain elevators closed for good in 1989, a result
of modern-day shift from the pioneer wooden grain elevators along
the central Alberta rail line to selected
"super-elevators" in larger centres. But residents saw
the tourism dollar potential, and successfully lobbied to buy two
elevators from the Alberta Wheat Pool for $1 each.
In 1990, the Alberta Prairie Steam Train, a private tourism
operation, began running along the old central Alberta rail line.
With CN's passenger service long discontinued through Rowley, it
was a huge stroke of good fortune, bringing in up to 8,000
tourists in the spring and summer and adding tens of thousands of
dollars to local coffers.
But in 1997, the good times crashed. The Alberta Prairie Steam
Train's run to Rowley was canceled. The town lost tens of
thousands of dollars in revenue, and then the following year, the
rail line pulled its track. No train service. No tourists. The
town could not afford the $80,000 per mile it would have cost to
buy the line.
Several years ago, just a kilometre or so down the rail line,
Hollywood movie producers for the Legends of the Fall motion
picture shot a scene where a coffin was being unloaded. But locals insist the town is not dead in the ground yet. Sam's
Saloon is still open for business, and tourists still trickle in.
A tour guide leads visitors around the town's sites, even
showing where the rail tracks were dug up along the front of the
old station. The community hall caters events, and the town even
has a brochure to market itself as a ghost town. Maybe, they hope,
enough money can be raised to paint and restore the grain
elevators, before they too disappear like the railroad tracks.
Heritage Community Foundation Presents
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