Development of the Turner Valley Oil Field was slow until after the Great War. But the development that occurred through the 1920s and 1930s added another unique dimension to Calgary's economic profile and assured that city's preeminence in the western Canadian petroleum industry.
This photograph shows a section of the Turner Valley Oil Field in 1929. It was developed largely by the Royalite Oil Company, a subsidiary of Imperial Oil Limited, which took over the holdings of the discovery firm, the Calgary Petroleum Products Company. Imperial Oil began construction of Alberta's first modern oil refinery at Calgary in 1921, while Royalite commenced a deeper exploratory drilling programme. Their success in 1924 led to the drilling of some of two hundred wells over the next twelve years. The large quantities of natural gas which accompanied the oil, and for which there was an insufficient market, had to be burned off. For over a decade, the resultant gas flares burned night and day and could often be seen in Calgary, thirty miles to the north. They gave the valley a fearsome aspect, aptly captured in the popular local description, Hell's Half Acre. A gas flare burns on the left of this photograph, while horses graze peacefully in the foreground.
