A Brief History Of The McIntyre Ranch

After Billy’s death in November 1947, Senator W.A. Buchanan (and President and Managing Director of The Lethbridge Herald), wrote the following:

The story of the earlier years of Southern Alberta is the story of ranching. It could not be told better than Billy McIntyre has recorded it in the pages of this brochure, and it is fortunate that, just a few months before his untimely death in November, 1947, he took the time to write and thus preserve for posterity, the story of the ranch his father had founded over half a century earlier. The Lethbridge Herald through the years has sought to preserve the early history of the Southern part of Alberta and has encouraged those who had the material to put it in print. This my good friend did in the articles he wrote on the McIntyre Ranch. 

There is no better known ranch in all of Western Canada. Its name is as familiar to the people of Southern Alberta as our rivers, our highways and our settled communities. The McIntyre Ranch gave the ranching industry in Southern Alberta distinction all over the continent and even beyond. It was more than a ranch . . it was a demonstration station, with an irrigation system that made the home surroundings a beauty spot, with livestock of outstanding quality . . . and grain farming in no small way also. At the head of it all was the vibrating personality of Billy McIntyre, a worthy son of the pioneer founder of the Ranch. There were no finer hosts than the McIntyres and those who knew Billy intimately, as I did, miss him greatly.

W. A. Buchanan