Rowley3

Rowley... 3

But more challenges followed Rowley's sudden sharp rise to prominence. The grain elevators closed for good in 1989, a result of modern-day shift from the pioneer wooden grain elevators along the central Alberta rail line to selected "super-elevators" in larger centres. But residents saw the tourism dollar potential, and successfully lobbied to buy two elevators from the Alberta Wheat Pool for $1 each.

In 1990, the Alberta Prairie Steam Train, a private tourism operation, began running along the old central Alberta rail line. With CN's passenger service long discontinued through Rowley, it was a huge stroke of good fortune, bringing in up to 8,000 tourists in the spring and summer and adding tens of thousands of dollars to local coffers.

Rowley’s grain elevators are no longer used. However, area residents purchased them and the fast disappearing relics of Alberta’s pioneer past were saved from the wrecker’s ball.

An old automobile, once fixed up by residents to look like a police cruiser, lays idle and forgotten in an alley off Main Street.

An abandoned Rowley homestead.

A wooden grave marker in Rowley’s pioneer cemetery.

Although this cross has fallen in Rowley’s cemetery, the graveyard is meticulously cared for by area residents.

Rowley’s long abandoned baseball field.

Passengers boarding and leaving the train are a sight of the past for locals. The rails extend only 100 metres in both directions from the station as they were pulled out in 1998. The station is now a museum.

But in 1997, the good times crashed. The Alberta Prairie Steam Train's run to Rowley was canceled. No train service. No tourists. No revenue. But locals insist the town is not dead in the ground yet. Sam's Saloon is still open for business, and tourists still trickle in.

A tour guide leads visitors around the town's sites, even showing where the rail tracks were dug up along the front of the old station. Maybe, they hope, enough money can be raised to paint the grain elevators, before they too disappear like the railroad tracks.