Just one kilometre from Irricana is Pioneer Acres, a museum dedicated to preserving Alberta’s heritage. The museum, which features vintage tractors and historical pioneer artifacts displays, will be celebrating its 49th anniversary this weekend with a number of special events.
The annual show starts Friday and runs until Sunday, with highlights being heavy horse hitches, an antique tractor pull, a ferrier display to see how horses are shoed, daily horse parades, blacksmithing demonstrations, and wheelwright building which will show visitors how wheels used to be made. There are many more events planned over the course of the weekend.
Forty-nine years is a milestone for any organization, but for show chairman Lyle Rowe, the museum’s great significance for Albertans is what keeps people coming.
“Volunteers are driven by the will and determination to show and tell how pioneers prevailed without modern technology. The museum shows how early pioneers survived and made a decent living,” Rowe says.
Each year a different tractor or farm equipment manufacturer is featured and this year it is Allis-Chalmers and Rumely tractors and equipment. Allis-Chalmers Company was formed in Wisconsin in 1901 and became an industrial conglomerate, manufacturing farm, mining, and industrial equipment before it was dissolved in 1985. Rumely started in 1853 in Indiana and manufactured threshers and later moved onto steam engines. The company was purchased by Allis-Chalmers in 1931 and stopped production of all models. A presentation about these companies will be at 11 a.m. at the Ron Carey building at the museum. More information about the weekend can be found at the Pioneer Acres website at
www.pioneeracres.ab.ca
