Beginnings


Our look at the history of Lindbergh starts with the Fur Trade forts begun in 1792 when William Tomlinson built Buckingham House on the high ground above the river. Although these posts only lasted 8 years they were followed by a pack trail north of the river blazed in 1815 at the request of Rowand of Fort Edmonton. It kept to cree territory and avoided the disputes of various groups on the south side of the river. Briefly Dog Rump House was established east of the Dog Rump Creek around the bend above Eagle Cliff where there was a ford. This Post existed briefly to collect pemmican for the fur trade. Five years later it was abandoned and  in 1829 its logs floated to Fort Vermilion near the current Lea Park Bridge. 

The trail through the Lindbergh area was widened in 1862 by the fathers from Lac La Biche to improve fur transport just as changes started to hit the entire west. Increasing violence due to liquor use in the fur trade, the sale of land to Canada, the arrival of the NWMP, the building of telegraph lines and the start of railways began to change this faily empty country side. After the 1885 rebellion the Dominion Telegraph went through the area following the trail and a telegraph station was built at Mooswa. Considerable lumbering on Moose Creek, especially for birch took place in the late 1800s.

With the formation of the Province of Alberta in 1905 and the surveying of the land in the area in the late 1890s the immigration to western Canada went from a trickle of new immigrants to a flood of newcomers, even in the Lindbergh area. The ferry in 1911 helped sustain travel to Vermilion, the closest access to the railway then. 

The arrival of the railway in 1927 changed the countryside with the store and post office at Mooswa moving to the new townsite of Lindbergh.