A tall, feathery column of black spray shot into the air and a throaty roar echoed over the grainfields outside Edmonton. Within minutes, a bumper-to-bumper line of cars was moving out of the city along the westbound Jasper highway, heading for the new Acheson oilfield, seven miles away. There a crowd gathered to relish a familiar but stirring sight. Alberta's newest oil well was blowing in wildly, gushing up 200 feet and spitting blobs of copper-black crude for half a mile around.
Rampaging wells and eager people are signs of the times in booming Alberta. All Canada has expanded amazingly since World War II; discoveries of iron ore, nickel, copper, uranium and titanium are cracking open a dozen new frontiers. But the biggest boom of all is in Alberta's oil, the most significant new find on the continent since Texas' Spindletop roared in, 50 years ago.
First Tide. Since 1947, when Imperial Oil, Ltd.'s Leduc No. 1 gushed from a snow-covered Alberta plain, 45 new oilfields have been spudded in across the province. Portable derricks, lumbering over the land like giant steel giraffes, have drilled more than two new wells a day. More than 300 million U.S. dollars, one of the freest and fastest streams of American private capital ever sluiced into a foreign country, have been invested in Alberta oil. Reserves of 2 billion bbls. are already proved, and experts say that that is only the first tide from a great oily sea buried deep under the province's fields, lakes and mountains.
With characteristic Canadian reserve, Alberta has suppressed most of the roistering atmosphere of a traditional oil boom. But the physical evidence of a changing frontier is visible everywhere. In Edmonton, the provincial capital, steel skeletons of new skyscrapers rise against a background of frame buildings, false-fronted stores and old log houses. The city's population, up from 113,000 to 160,000 since 1946, has spread out beyond the reach of existing sidewalks, plumbing and telephone lines.
Full-fledged towns such as Redwater (pop. 3,600), Leduc (pop. 1,500) and Devon (pop. 2,400) have mushroomed in the countryside. Pipelines crisscross the grainfields; grazing cattle placidly drink out of the safety pools around burning-off oil wells. Oil exploration teams roam tirelessly on the rolling, almost treeless prairie of the south, among the mixed farms and forests of mid-province and through the wilderness of northern woods and lakes. The brisk, winy aroma of prosperity is in the air.
First Prize. Like Texas, Alberta was prosperous even before its oil wells spouted their new wealth. The southern plains country, where the warm Chinook blowing off the Rockies keeps the rich range grasses clear of snow, is one of North America's great pasture lands. Its sleek, black Aberdeen-Angus, white-faced Herefords and square-built red Shorthorns provide more than a quarter of Canada's beef supply; steaks from Alberta steers are eaten as far away as Karachi, capital of Pakistan, half the circuit around the globe.