The History of Cranberry Portage
Prior to 1928, Cranberry Portage was little more than its name implies, a portage in the route used by Indians, explorers and adventurers. Long before the Hudson's Bay Company and North West Company used the portage, Indian families migrated across it annually to their summer hunting ground. Found along these routes are artefacts showing occupancy as far back as 500 AD.
See the Manitoba Culture History Overview for the palaeo-history of Manitoba
In the 1780's, the noted map maker and explorer, David Thompson, traversed the area. On one of his maps, he called Cranberry Portage the "Cranberry Carrying Place" and indicated the profusion of cranberries that existed there 200 years ago.
Records show that the Hudson Bay Company carried on trade with the Natives at Cranberry Portage, but no permanent trading post was established and the portage remained relatively quiet until the beginning of the twentieth century.
Mining and prospector fever hit the The Pas-Flin Flon area at the turn of the century. This stimulated economic development throughout the area, and because of Cranberry Portage's location affected the town's development. The year 1928 saw the coming of the railway and Cranberry was chosen as a distributing terminal for railway supplies going north from The Pas to the huge mineral finds at Flin Flon, Sherridon and Elbow Lake. The first year of the existence of Cranberry Portage was recorded in Ruth and Jack Patterson's book, Cranberry Portage (McClelland and Stewart, 1970).
Prospectors from all across North America headed into Cranberry Portage, lured by the possibility of "striking it rich." Stores, rooming houses, tents and log cabins sprang up along the shores of Lake Athapapuskow. The population soared to over 2,000. By the end of 1928, there were six stores, eight restaurants, two theatres, a bank, a drugstore, a hotel, a jail, a weekly newspaper, sauna baths, a Western Canadian Airways Base, "flophouses," and a number of private businesses of questionable virtue.
Initially, the town was situated along the eastern shoreline of Lake Athapapuskow. In 1929 tragedy struck the town as a forest fire, fanned by high winds, gutted almost all of the town. Some ofthe residents saved some of their belongings by putting them down wells. Many people took boats and barges out into the bay to escape the flames.
The fire coincided with an end of the railway construction boom, but undaunted and having faith in the future of their town, store keepers and some of the local residents rebuilt up the hill from the smouldering debris on the present-day site of Cranberry Portage. Subsequently, many of the permanent residents looked to fishing, tie cutting, prospecting, mining and mink ranching for alternative means of livelihood. During the 1930's and 40's Cranberry's growth slowed. Joe Robertson, who recorded his life as an officer for the Manitoba Department of Natural Resources in From Prairie to Tundra (Dauphin, 1991) , gives a fascinating picture of life in the Cranberry Portage area in the period when the province sought to bring order to the North after the unregulated influx of trappers and fishermen into the region in the twenties and thirties.
In 1949, a new highway followed the land ridge and passed through the town providing it with its road link to the outside world. With the highway came a new industry associated with an unprecedented influx of tourists.
Visitors marvelled over the scenic beauty and the superb fishing in the lakes around Cranberry. As word of these attractions spread the tourist trade grew and today Cranberry boasts over half a dozen lodges within its boundaries. These include: Athapap Lodge, Caribou Lodge, Northern Spirit Lodge (1994), Tonapah Lodge, and Viking Lodge.
Visitors have easy eastern access to the Cranberry Lakes, Elbow Lake and the Grass River Provincial Park, while west of town lodges front Lake Athapapuskow which also offers excellent fishing and other recreational pursuits.
While the tourist industry was still in its early stages other developments also affected the community. Several independent groups established lumbering operations to harvest the rich forest resources in the Cranberry area. These included: Anderson Logging, Leptick Sawmill Ltd., and Petryk Bros. Ltd. In 1956, another construction and cultural boom invaded Cranberry Portage. That was the time of the "Cold War," and a mid-Canada radar site was in progress. Cranberry's geographical location was again a factor in its selection for this project and more workers and their families moved in and new stores opened to serve the enlarged population.
The radar technology introduced new types of occupations and lifestyles accelerating the process of culture change in the town. For example, this was the time when running water and indoor plumbing started to be installed in local homes. The growth lasted until April, 1964, when the site became obsolete and closed down. However, some of those who had come to work on it chose to stay and the buildings, such as a large hangar and the barracks, were left in place.
Aerial view of the campus of Frontier Collegiate - its radar base origins are still visible, particularly with the helicopter hangar (left foreground) and the radar tower (left centre, below the orange building which is Cranberry Portage Elementary School)
The period of inactivity following the closing of the radar site was brief as the facility was reopened in September, 1965 as a new venture - a residential high school. Frontier Collegiate Institute was established to serve as the centre for secondary education for the newly established Frontier School Division #48. The opening of the Collegiate brought further economic and cultural changes to Cranberry Portage. Numbers of local residents were hired for various jobs available on campus such as caretakers, cafeteria workers, secretaries and teachers' aides. The influx of professional educators and students from many outside northern Manitoba communities also brought new dimensions to the social mix in town.
A further dimension in Cranberry's evolution was added in 1969 when the provincially-owned Manitoba Forest Resources (ManFor Ltd.) opened a multi-million dollar pulp and paper industry in northern Manitoba. A large number of woodworkers and their families moved into town. Their presence added another facet to the social mix.
In 1989 ManFor Limited's facilities at The Pas and its extensive logging rights were purchased by Repap, a Montreal based private pulp and paper company. In the summer of 1997, Repap's Manitoba operation was taken over by Tolko Manitoba Inc. Today, some of the men employed by Tolko continue to reside in Cranberry Portage.
In 1997 also, CN sold off its northern rail lines to Lynn Lake and to Churchill to Denver-based OmniTRAX,Inc., a private operator which specializes in short track rail lines. A new rail company, the Hudson Bay Railway, has been created to operate the Lynn Lake and Bay lines. Cranberry Portage continued to be a stop on the Lynn Lake line, and thus it maintains its link with the railway, which was the original factor in the development of the town. In 2002 the rail service to Lynn Lake ended, with the closing of the Ruttan Mine at Leaf Rapids. Trains continue to run as far as Pukatawagan to service the community, and to haul logs from the Sherridon area.
The Cranberry Portage Heritage Museum association has been working hard to procure a building for a museum in Cranberry Portage. More pictures of the History of Cranberry Portage are available on the their website.