Editing Fort Qu'Appelle (section)

== Development ==
[[File:Fort Qu'Appelle Broadway Street circa 1948.jpg|thumbnail|left|Fort Qu'Appelle Broadway Street circa 1948: Fort Hotel at the far end of the street with the north side of the valley above Mission Lake beyond it]]
[[File:Fort drugstore.gif|thumbnail|right|Fort Qu'Appelle drugstore circa World War I]]
[[File:Fort bank.gif|thumbnail|right|Fort bank circa World War I. Donald H. McDonald, whose name is on the building, was the last Hudson's Bay Company factor until 1911. Presently it serves as the Town of Fort Qu'Appelle Office and Council Chambers.]]

The town's substantial growth beyond its status as a Hudson's Bay Company "factory" first occurred in the 1880s and 1890s when European settlement began in the region as the [[Canadian Pacific Railway]] moved westwards: a post office opened in 1880.<ref name="ReferenceA">[http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/fort_quappelle.html David McLennan. "Fort Qu'Appelle." The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan. CANADIAN PLAINS RESEARCH CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF REGINA. Retrieved 10 July 2012]</ref> This coincided with the first development of British India after the seizing of control of India from the [[East India Company]] by [[The Crown]] after the [[Indian Rebellion of 1857|1857 Indian Mutiny]], and the town of Fort Qu'Appelle's striking similarity to the Indian hill stations of the early Raj has been widely commented upon by anyone who has seen both. Although the North-West Mounted Police headquarters was established in Regina once it was named capital of the North-West Territories in 1882, the substantial police station at the western end of the town of Fort Qu'Appelle remained significant as centre of service within the valley and in rural communities and to farms in the plains region: this became more important though less as nearby towns declined from the beginning of the [[Great Depression in Canada|Great Depression]] in 1929 and continuing after World War II.

Older residences and commercial premises together with the town's Anglican and [[United Church of Canada|United (formerly Presbyterian)]] churches are quintessentially of the 19th century hinterland [[British Empire]], a matter which local civic boosters and cultivators of tourism appear not yet to have capitalised upon. "In 1913, construction began on a fish culture station near Fort Qu'Appelle and, to date, the facility has supplied more than 2 billion fish to stock water bodies throughout the province....[T]he Fort Qu'Appelle Sanatorium ([[Fort San, Saskatchewan|Fort San]]) for tuberculosis patients...[opened in] 1917."<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

[[File:Fort Qu'Appelle hotel.gif|thumbnail|left|Fort Hotel in the 1920s, destroyed by fire in the 1960s]]
The commercial shops, being grocery and supply centres for the ample number of area farms, were substantially busier than they would have been if merely for town residents; the Fort Hotel of the early 20th century through the 1960s had a well-attended pub with its parking lot full late Friday afternoons through evenings. A large drive-in movie theatre stood on Bay Avenue south of the railway track just before the entry into the [[coulee]] on Highway 36 to leave the valley; it had lively attendance by townspeople, cottagers and farmers until the 1960s when home television significantly improved and the drive-in closed.

Despite the accelerating decline of rural Saskatchewanian population in the post-World War II years as farms needed to be larger and therefore fewer in number for economic viability, the town grew through most of the 1950s and 1960s as a cottage community serving the Qu'Appelle Lakes summer-cottage country in the valley up- and down-river from the town.  Cottagers from Regina and other southern Saskatchewan communities used Fort Qu'Appelle as a base from which to explore the scenic and historic river valley, purchase hardware and groceries and contract services; the town also benefited [[Urbanization|urban drift]] as farms and other towns steadily depopulated.

This process was precipitately accelerated in the early 1960s. Highway 35 had reached Fort Qu'Appelle by branching off the [[Trans-Canada Highway]] at the once-significant town Qu'Appelle and somewhat laboriously proceeding into the Qu'Appelle Valley by winding through an un-occupied coulee. The old highway was supplemented and effectively replaced by Highway 10, leaving the Trans-Canada at [[Balgonie]] and taking a straight route from the plain into the valley. This vastly eased access from the southwest and increased Fort Qu'Appelle's attraction over other market-places for farmers.

[[File:Original Springbrook School, 1970.jpg|thumb|19th-century country school building elsewhere shown while still in use; here photographed in 1970, seven years after closure of successor across the road, from site of teacher's residence: demonstrating steady depopulation of farm neighbourhoods.]]
In 1963, with steadily decreasing density of farm neighbourhood populations and increasing quality of highways, the rural school districts were abolished and farm primary and high school children—taught in one building with one or two classrooms—were thereafter bused to town schools. Rural churches having largely closed in the 1950s, the collapse of rural farming communities was now assured, to the benefit of minor metro-poles such as Fort Qu'Appelle though arguably to the impoverishment of the community as a whole. With the building of Highway 10 making access to Fort Qu'Appelle from outside the valley easier and faster, the process of farmers using it rather than previously substantial towns such as Qu'Appelle, [[Edgeley, Saskatchewan|Edgeley]] and [[Balcarres, Saskatchewan|Balcarres]] for selling grain and buying groceries further increased its size and vitality. The town itself is today "a shopping, service, and institutional centre serving the surrounding [f]arming community, neighbouring resort villages, cottagers and summer vacationers."<ref>[http://esask.uregina.ca/entry/fort_quappelle.html  David McLennan. "Fort Qu'Appelle." The Encyclopedia of Saskatchewan. CANADIAN PLAINS RESEARCH CENTER, UNIVERSITY OF REGINA. Retrieved 15 February 2012]</ref> Many traditional lake summer cottages have become year-round residences, together with winter skiing further expanding demand for the town's shopping facilities.