Alberta CPR Land Sales Records from 1883 to 1927

Alberta CPR Land Sales Spatial Data contains records of agricultural land sales by the Canadian Pacific Railway to settlers in Alberta from 1883 to 1927. The dataset includes purchaser names, legal land descriptions, acreage, and cost per acre, transcribed from original ledgers by Glenbow Archives volunteers and enhanced by Archives and Special Collections at UCalgary. A non-spatial tabular version and an interactive web application for exploring the spatial data are also available.

Use Cases

• Mapping historical land ownership patterns based on legal land descriptions linked to spatial boundaries.
• Analyzing land transaction costs over time based on cost per acre and purchase date.
• Studying settler demographics and migration based on purchaser names and land parcel locations.
• Correlating agricultural land development with railway expansion based on the CPR sales records.

Strengths

• Records span a 44-year period from 1883 to 1927.
• Data includes multiple key features: purchaser name, legal description, acres purchased, and cost per acre.
• One of three provincial spatial datasets in a collection, allowing for comparative regional analysis.

Limitations

• The description explicitly states completeness and accuracy cannot be guaranteed.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale analysis.

Provenance

Source

Archives and Special Collections at UCalgary, from original CPR Land Sales ledgers held at Glenbow Archives.

Collection Method

Transcribed by volunteers from Glenbow Archives, later enhanced by Archives and Special Collections at UCalgary.

Time Range

1883 to 1927

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-30 04:10:35; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Alberta, Canada