Turner Valley Interpretive Centre

The Grade 4 & 5 classes went to the Turner Valley Interpretative Centre for a field trip. Students observed the artifacts in the museum and viewed an early black and white video, "Story of Oil", about the oil booms.

We also were given an interesting tour of the Turner Valley Gas Plant. This included seeing some of the equipment in the two buildings, such as the Compressor Building and the Scrubbing Plant. The tour explained how the facilities at the plant changed wet, sour gas that comes from the field into dry, sweet gas to be used in the homes.

As we walked, we saw holes in the dark soil where gas was seeping out and smelled the sulphur smell. We also saw bubbles of gas in a water puddle at the same place that Bill Herron found gas (Sheep River Historical Society, p. 41) . He started Dingman #1 Well which struck gas on May 14, 1914 and started the petroleum resource boom in our area.

As a result of our visit there, our dig, and the questions we were asking, the staff at the Interpretive Centre will be researching to find more information about the North End (near Millarville) of the Turner Valley Oil Field.

We saw some of the large tools people used back then. We might find some of these in our dig.

We expected to find some bottles or pieces of glass. Perhaps these bottles would help us match what we found. Andrea Richardson, our archaeologist, uses a catalog of all sorts of artifacts that help her identify what the pieces are and where they are from.