120 DOMINION EXPERIMENTAL FARMS 



EXPERIMENTAL STATION 



FOR 



CENTRAL ALBERTA, 



LACOMBE, ALTA. 



The Experimental Station for Central Alberta was estab- 

 lished at Lacombe in March, 1907. The town of Lacombe is 

 located about 115 miles north of Calgary and about 80 miles 

 south of Edmonton on the Calgary and Edmonton Branch of the 

 Canadian Pacific Railway. This Company is extending a line 

 east from Lacombe which is completed at present to Coronation. 

 This line will eventually be connected up with Outlook, Moose 

 Jaw and the East. The Canadian . Northern Railway is now 

 constructing a line from Edmonton to Calgary which passes 

 through Lacombe, near which town it also connects with the 

 Brazeau line of that road. Railway accommodation of this kind 

 places the Lacombe Experimental Station within easy reach of 

 many farmers whose problems it is intended to be of some 

 assistance in solving. 



The land, some 490 acres in all, is the south-east and south- 

 west quarters of section twenty-four (24) and the north-west 

 quarter and a small part of the north-east quarter of section 

 13 township forty (40) range twenty-seven (27) west of the 

 fourth (4) meridian and adjoins the Lacombe townsite on the 

 south-west. The Experimental Station is only about one mile 

 from the stations on both lines of railway and but two blocks 

 farther from the post office. 



Being traversed by both the Calgary and Edmonton Rail- 

 way and the Calgary and Edmonton trail, the right of way of 

 these lines of traffic, while offering to travellers a splendid view 

 of the work under way, curtails, by about ten acres, the area of 

 the quarter-section otherwise available for experimental work. 



The soil is fairly uniform in character, being a rich black 

 loam on clay subsoil, except over the elevation where the build- 

 ings are ocated, which is sandy loam. The surface soil varies in 

 depth from one foot to four feet or even more, while the clay 

 sub-soil runs at east thirty-three feet, which is the depth of the 

 deepest well on the Station. A part of the Station had been 

 under grain crop continuous y for fifteen years previous to its 

 acquisition by the Dominion Government and, not having been 



