Team Hauling Oil Well Supplies to Turner Valley from Okotoks, 1924.
Teamsters in this picture are returning after having delivered their cargo of Turner Valley oil to Okotoks, the nearest railhead 35 kilometres to the east. Using six to twelve Percheron dray horses, rugged teamsters drove these wagons carrying twenty-barrel oil tankers and pulling a trailer wagon with an additional ten barrels. On the return journey, they carried back supplies such as this boiler. The wagon in the rear operated as a "bush team" to help control the speed of the main wagon on downhill grades.
Most of the oil produced during the early twenties in the Turner Valley field was transported to Calgary by horse and wagon. One of the most notable teamsters of the era was Sam Johnson, a district rancher, who went on to become a regular winner of the chuckwagon races at the Calgary Stampede. (See Allan Anderson, Roughnecks and Wildcatters (Toronto: Macmillan, 1981), p. 83, and Jack Peach, "Oil Era of 1920s mixed hard-toil, high living," Calgary Herald, 1 August 1981. p. E7.)
