Indian Head

Indian Head is a small town in what is today southeastern Saskatchewan, an early home to European settlers of the Canadian west. The site lay along the proposed route of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In February 1882 William Robert Bell applied to the Canadian government for the purchase of an area of roughly 100 square miles. The government of Sir John A. Macdonald approved the sale of the land, about 23,658 acres, at $1.25 an acre on the understanding that the farm would serve as a vehicle to advertise the potential of the region and would place prospective settlers on the land at double the rate specified under dominion homestead provisions. The venture quickly became known as the Bell model farm.