The Michelsen Farmstead Provincial Resource is located on 1.5 acres of land inside the Village of Stirling at 533 2nd Avenue.
Open: Monday to Friday, 9am – 4:30pm for June, July and August and by appointment during other times of the year.
Cost: FREE. Group bookings are available. Donations are gratefully accepted.
There is a picnic area available if the group would like to arrange for lunch or a break before heading out.
Phone: 403-315-0995
Email: l.nilsson@stirling.ca
The 1904 family home, which was owned by Andreas and Kirsten Michelsen, was remodelled to the present style in 1912. The home has been restored on the main floor to represent life between the 1900s and 1930s. Displays include original artifacts from the Michelsen family and other local residents. The original large hip-roof barn contains display of tack, livestock tools and farm equipment. A buggy, several wagons and larger farm implements are also on the grounds. Other buildings include a blacksmith shop, coal shed/summer kitchen and a two story granary which doubled as a summer bedroom for the boys.
The Michelsen Farmstead is run and maintained by the Stirling Historical Society. The mission of the Stirling Historical Society is to collect, preserve, restore, exhibit and interpret artifacts which represent rural settler lifestyles of Southern Alberta. A special focus is made on the influence of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) on the development of Stirling and the surrounding region from the 1899 – 1939
From the very beginning it was clear that the new settlement of Stirling was expected to be economically self-sufficient. Allotment of 2.5 acre building plots were designed specifically so the individual owners could provide their own food. Equally important, but sometimes overlooked, was the expectation that the newly established village should be a community in the fullest sense. This must of course, include cultural outlets to relieve the monotony of daily labour.
The ability to provide for themselves culturally as well as physically, contributed to the strength and self-reliance that was a sustaining force for Stirling throughout the years.
Entertainment at the turn of the century had to be locally provided, for travel was slow and difficult. House parties were the norm for the early settlers. Friends would gather at various homes for visiting, card playing, or spontaneous music. Locals would play the bones for rhythm, or the violin for a quick dance, others were known for singing.
The Michelsen home was a favorite gathering place for many years, and the family hosted my dances typical of those house parties. Though by today’s standards the space was limited, moving furniture and rolling back rugs in the parlor and dining rooms created enough room to dance one square. The fiddler would lean against the doorway between the two rooms and play whatever the dancers desired. If the group was larger and the weather was good, the dancers were moved to the loft of the barn. Michelsen barn dances were popular for more than 75 years.
As the time went on, the dayliner to Lethbridge offered new opportunities to the residents of Stirling and the surrounding area. But the Michelsen Farmstead remained a favorite gathering place – though its focus had changed slightly. Farmers from the surrounding area would often drive their teams to Stirling. They would then catch the train to Lethbridge leaving their team and wagon at the Michelsen farm, sometimes for several days.
The popularity of the farm was not restricted to the adults. Youngsters found the hay loft to be a perfect place to “sleepover” and the young Michelsen boys carried on endless “Cops and Robbers” shoot outs with their friends. The Michelsen boys were the preferred “bad guys” in these games. This latter activity was a source of great concern to one neighbour who predicted a dark future for young boys who spent so much of their time in such “unlawful play”. It is one of life’s little ironies that Glen Michelsen was the first Stirling native son to join the RCMP and two of his three brothers followed his example by making law enforcement their career.
The continued importance of the Michelsen Farmstead can still be seen today even though no Michelsens now reside in the home. In 2001 the Andreas Michelsen Homestead was declared a Provincial Historic Resource with the house and outbuildings restored to the period of the 1930’s.
Stirling is Canada's best surviving example of a Mormon agricultural village. With its wide streets, large lots and grouped homesteads, it reflects the model community of Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Stirling was established in 1899 by immigrants from the western United States who were hired to build the Galt Irrigation Canal. Paid partly in land around the village, these hard-working settlers brought this arid region of the prairies into agricultural production and thereby sustained their close-knit community life.
Stirling Agricultural Village occupies one-square mile (260 hectares) of land in the heart of the short-grass prairie of southern Alberta, appearing as an oasis of trees and farmsteads amid a flat, open landscape. The one-section plat is laid out in a regular grid of wide streets with each ten-acre (4.1 hectares) block divided into large lots with widely spaced, wood-frame houses, agricultural outbuildings, gardens and animal pens. The village also includes a commercial area, a school and a church.
Stirling Agricultural Village was designated a national historic site of Canada because it is the best surviving example of a Mormon agricultural village.
The heritage value of the village resides in its illustration of a typical Mormon settlement form from the turn of the twentieth century. It was introduced to southern Alberta by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who settled in this region during the Great Wheat Boom era from the late 1890s to 1914. The village of Stirling was founded in 1899 through a partnership between the Alberta Railway and Irrigation Company and the LDS Church to bring American immigrants to build an irrigation canal and found two villages, Stirling and Cardston.
Key features contributing to the heritage value of this site include:
- the location of the village near the Galt Canal and the junction of two regional railway lines,
- the one-square mile plat with its grid plan created by 100-foot (30.5 metres) wide streets forming ten-acre blocks, divided into eight lots of 1.25 acres (5058.6 square metres),
- remnants of ditches, culverts, levees, cisterns, and an irrigation channel that drew water from the Galt Canal,
- abundance of vegetation including poplars, cottonwoods, pine, elm, ash, and fruit trees; berry and flowering bushes; carrigana hedges; pastures; and gardens,
- surviving traditional farmsteads with house set back 25 feet (7.6 metres) from the street at one corner of the property, a shelter belt of trees or bushes along the street in front and beside the house, barns and outbuilding grouped at the back of the property, a garden close to the house with a nearby root cellar, with remainder of the lot for corrals and pasture,
- separation of lots with fences of varied materials and design,
- the presence of a school and a Mormon church,
- the collection of houses, barns and outbuildings that survive from the pre-World War Two period in their surviving form and materials.
(Parks Canada - Stirling Agricultural Village National Historic Site of Canada)