Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History No. 16

The Cochrane Ranch

by William Naftel

Conclusions

In the context of 1880, the substantial financial investment in the Cochrane Ranche Company can be seen as a somewhat daring one and it is in Senator Cochrane's willingness to take this first step that the significance of the whole operation is found. Ever since the Dominion had assumed jurisdiction over the Hudson's Bay Company territory in 1869, controversy had been continuous between those who advocated immediate development by Canadians and those who often were not even sure that taking over the Northwest had been a good idea in the first place. Cochrane's large investment in the foothills of the Rockies and his influence on his fellow investors to do likewise, well before the CPR had been able to demonstrate that it could carry out its obligations, represented a necessary first step in establishing the Northwest in the confidence of other eastern capitalists.

For the ranching industry in particular, the Cochrane ranch had an almost equally great significance. Cochrane was not the only one to have advocated raising cattle in the Northwest and had he not done so, no doubt someone else would have made the same move, but he was the first to translate these ideas into reality. Others then awaited the results of the experiment before following suit themselves, as the senator noted somewhat bitterly on occasion.¹ The lessons learned, while costly for the Cochrane ranch, enabled others to avoid many, if not all, of the pitfalls the new country laid before them. In its status as "proving ground," Big Hill led to a more realistic appraisal of the foothills as a ranching country and in particular virtually destroyed the reputation of the Bow River country as the grazing ground par excellence. Henceforth the big ranches would be found in the Pincher Creek area and to the south.

In its determination to establish high standards at the very beginning the Cochrane ranch also set a precedent for other ranches to follow. In time the demands of the marketplace would have made this approach necessary, but Cochrane's past experience in the livestock trade had been that the initial expense of high quality always paid off in time. These standards were maintained during the difficult years at Big Hill and on the southern range, and helped establish a tradition of quality for Alberta beef.

Of considerable importance to the ranching industry was the establishment of the operating environment which owed a great deal to Cochrane's influence with the government of the day. For all practical purposes, there were in 1880 no regulations for ranching at all. Few persons of influence were interested in so academic a subject, leaving a vacuum Cochrane proceeded to fill. As a result of his lobbying inspired by self-interest, government regulation of ranches up to 1896 favoured the large, heavily capitalized, semi-monopolistic business operation. That the growing population brought with it populist democratic sympathies which forced basic changes in those conditions was not something Cochrane could have foreseen.

Possibly of more academic significance was the rancher-settler conflict on the Cochrane leases, one of many such, but because of its proximity to the town of Calgary, an almost classic example of its type. All the elements were present — the economic investment of the rancher, the settler's overwhelming land hunger, the merchant, the politician, the railway — and produced a few dramatic years of confrontation and the eventual and inevitable victory of the settler.

The Cochrane ranch inaugurated and set the style of an era in Canadian history which, although brief in its occupation of centre stage, had a profound influence. The scale of operation it introduced represented in Canada a revolution in the beef industry comparable to that wrought for agriculture by the vast prairie wheat farms and the extensive use of machinery. It was the beginning of the era which later generations would look back on with nostalgia as "The Golden Age of Ranching."