Beit Emmett: Browning to Banff

Day three of our road trip started in Browning Montana which is part of the Blackfeet Indian Reservation.

The creation story.

One of only two hotels in town. We ate dinner in the cafe adjacent to the casino. The only other options were Subway, a local hamburger place and Taco John's (not recommended by my brother Tom).

A billboard encouraging Blackfeet tribal members to not be duped by scammers offering great deals on land buy backs offered by the Department of the Interior.

Democracy is alive and well in Browning. Love the homemade signs.

Residential areas lacked typical American green grass lawns.

Another reservation town. The Blackfeet reservation abuts Glacier National park along its entire eastern boundary.

St. Mary's visitor Center.

It has an interesting exhibit about native Americans in the area including an ongoing land dispute with the government.

We spent part of the morning exploring Many Glacier Valley.

Three valleys (all with lakes) visited: Two Medicine (left), St. Mary's (Center) and Many Glacier (right).

Bighorn Sheep

Driving from Glacier to Waterton. The Chief.

Waterton.

Strong south winds and blowing waters off the lake hastened the packing up of our picnic.

Alberta LDS Temple in Cardston.

Both of my Grandmothers--Harriet Dudley Emmett and Veara Southworth Fife moved to Canada in their youth. Their parents were called on missions to help settle southern Alberta. The Dudleys settled in Magrath and the Southworths first in Raymond and then Taber.

The Family of Charles Heber Dudley and his wife Dorthy Ann Wallace. Harriet is second from the left on the back row. She was 10 years old when they moved from Willard Utah to Magrath in 1900. Her four brothers all married and remained in Magrath while the girls in the family all ended up moving back to Utah to find husbands. Harriet Dudley married Roland Emmett. Two of my brothers carry on the name: John (Jake) Dudley Emmett and Thomas Dudley Emmett.

Charles moved up in 1899 to start work on his section of an irrigation canal. In return his family would get land in Magrath. He was the first person to settle in Magrath. Her build a dugout home in the side of the bank of Pothole Creek.

The family later built a home where the red barn now stands. We stopped in at the city museum to get our bearings. Fortuitously two second cousins and a second cousin once removed were working there. It was a fun min-Dudley reunion as we all explained which of the children we descended from. They gave us great information and directions.

In the museum I took a photo of the large air photo of the city. The shining light is where the Dudley memorial is located at the site of the dugout home. Also seen is the canal Thomas dug and the cemetery where he is buried.

Magrath in 1919

When the Dudleys received the call to Canada, Dorothy was hesitant to leave their home and orchards in Willard. Her father, George Benjamin Wallace, a polygamist with five wives (including Hannah Davis and her two sisters that George converted in England) who was currently serving as a stake president went to Willard to visit with his troubled daughter. He told her that it was a calling from the Church and that she should cheer up and go and make the best of it and the Lord would bless her. So she went. After her husband died Dorothy would often return to Utah to visit her daughters. She died in Cache Valley and so the family had her buried in Salt Lake City.

We readily found graves of three of the sons and many other Dudleys in the northeast section of the cemetery.

The canal the Mormons built (this section by Thomas Dudley) in cooperation with he Canadian government to expand agriculture in southern Alberta.

The depression in the hillside is where the dugout home stood.

Proud Dudley descendants.

Looking out across the Pot Hole Creek channel.

A bend in the much smaller creek (most of the water is still diverted into the canal). The Dudley home was near the tall tree.

The diversion dam.

The gates leading into the canal.

The canal.

The tall bank of Pot Hole Creek west of Magrath. I'd like to imagine that this is what the bank looked like in 1899.

The irrigated plains of Southern Alberta between Magrath and Raymond.

Chester and Agnes Caldwell Southworth answered the call to move to Raymond Alberta in 1902. They were tasked with growing sugar beets and wheat. Here is Agnes with five of her daughters. Veara (back center) was the youngest of 13 children. The family later moved to Taber for a few years and then after seven years they moved to greener pastures in California and then eventually back to Brigham City. I grew up on stories from grandma Veara telling us about the joy of getting a single orange for Christmas each year, of a Christmas tree make out of stacked tumble weeds, of the blizzards and snow, of the plays her father directed and of being baptized in the bottom of the coulee.

Mormon Church on the east end of town. Raymond and Stirling were the two Mormon towns laid out in a typical Mormon style with numbered north, south, east and west streets.

We treated ourselves to milk shakes on the corner of Main and 200 West.

The owners were from Lebanon--a new generation of foreigners moving to Alberta. Joel took this photo while I was practicing my Arabic.

Modernized canals to the west of Raymond.

Calgary for dinner and sleep.

We had a delicious assortment of steamed and fried dumplings (including these dessert squash dumplings) at a restaurant in Chinatown.

First stop in Banff National Park was at the Cave and Basin National Historic Site. Protection of these hot springs was the small beginning of this beautiful national park.

Lots of people, but the hike up Johnston Canyon was worth it.

Lower Falls

Who knows how long the small trees (in photo above and below) on the cliff's edge will remain standing?

Upper Falls

While at the Upper Falls, we got a text from the Mission nurse saying Sarah's tooth extraction (her fourth oral surgery of lingering infection from her wisdom teeth extraction 18 months ago) was successful and looking promising that the infection will soon be gone. alhamdulilah. We took this photo to text back to the nurse to show to Sarah with an expression of our love and best wishes.