First ever “greatest outdoor show on earth’

Cowboys, outlaws, royalty, Indigenous, artists and tycoon businessmen all played roles in the unique story of the “Mighty Bar U”, making it one of the most legendary ranches in Canadian history. Flamboyant American promoter Guy Weadick,  who in 1912 persuaded Bar U owners to finance the first ever “greatest outdoor show on earth” Calgary Stampede, a […]

Prince of Wales & George Lane, September 1919

Any story about the Bar U Ranch is less a story about land and cattle than it is a story about people. From riders, chore men and chuckwagon cooks to visionary ranch owners, it was the people who visited, lived and worked here who made the Bar U the stuff of legend. Among some of […]

Putting up hay at the Bar U Ranch

Located deep in the southern Alberta foothills, on the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains, the Bar U Ranch (from 1882 to 1950) was a force to be reckoned with. While other large Alberta ranches succeeded for a time only to go out of business, especially after the killer winters of 1886 and 1906, the […]

Percheron stallion and handler

Bar U Ranch owner at that time, George Lane, starts world class Percheron breeding operation after importing stud and brood mare stock from Le Perche, France, 1909. He took every prize at the show horse competition at Seattle’s World Fair.

Bar U cattle literally fed the world.

The Bar U Ranch fed workers building the first transcontinental railway and waves of immigrants flooding to a new land. It fed Canada’s first Indigenous reservations, the first patrols of Northwest Mounted Police, our nation through the Great Depression and our soldiers through two World Wars. Bar U Percherons, “the work horses that powered North […]