There isn’t much in Whitla, Alberta. H.B. Chenoweth wrote the following: “Located 20 miles southwest of Medicine Hat, it is a real ghost town. The town began with the opening of the area to homesteading in 1908. It was named for R.J. Whitla, a Winnipeg merchant who visited the district in 1885 when it was a mere siding on the newly built Turkey Track Railway.
In 1910 there was a general store followed by a lumberyard, a hardware store, a farm machinery firm, a Union Bank, several cafes, and three auto repair shops. During 1917 drought, dust storms, grasshoppers and rabbits began consuming the crops and chasing the settlers away.
The exodus from Whitla had been gradual throughout the 1920s and increased noticeably through the ‘30s and ‘40s. By the end of World War II, the town had all but vanished.”
There are still a few farm houses in the area, and there is a cemetery north of where the town had been located. A time capsule that looks like a prairie grain elevator was placed in 2000, to be opened in 2035.