Fort Whoop-Up

Fort Whoop-Up, situated at the junction of the Belly (now Oldman) and St Mary rivers, near present-day LETHBRIDGE, Alta, was established in 1869 by John J. Healy and Alfred B. Hamilton of Montana. Its primary purpose was to gain a quick profit through an illicit trade in whisky for bison robes with the native people of the unpoliced southern prairies of western Canada.

Initially called Fort Hamilton, it was soon called Fort WHOOP-UP. It burned down after one trading season, and construction of a second and larger fort began in 1870. This was the most formidable and notorious of the several American whisky posts located in southern Alberta, and the entire area became known as "Whoop-Up country." With the arrival of the NORTH-WEST MOUNTED POLICE in 1874, however, the whisky posts began to be shut down. In succeeding years, part of Fort Whoop-Up served as an outpost for the force, but the fort soon fell into disrepair. It was burned and its remains dismantled by settlers for lumber and metal. A replica of the second fort was built in 1967.

See also WHOOP-UP.

Author ROBERT S. ALLEN

Suggested Reading
Hugh A. Dempsey, Firewater: The Impact of the Whisky Trade on the Blackfoot Nation (2002); Georgia Green Fooks, Fort Whoop-up: Alberta's First and Most Notorious Whisky Fort (1985).

Links to Other Sites
The RCMP March West
Read Commissioner George Arthur French’s day-by-day account of the treacherous journey that brought peace and order to Canada’s prairies -- the March West of 1874. A Royal Canadian Mounted Police website.

The Canadian Register of Historic Places
Canada is home to a vast array of fascinating historical sites. Many of them are illustrated and described in this searchable online database of Canadian historic places that are of local, provincial, territorial, and national significance.