“WILWIC” series - (“Why I Like Working In Camrose”)
As an employee of the City of Camrose, “J” gets to be involved in a number of really neat projects. As well, thanks to the great work of a number of former employees and municipal Councils from years’ gone by, the City of Camrose is home to a number of facilities and amenities which help make this a great place to live. Fortunately for the geocaching community, there are a number of great caches already in Camrose which highlight some of the amazing amenities of this fair City. The intent behind this caching series is to highlight a few of the remaining – and possibly lesser visited – locations within Camrose, and to hopefully provide some interesting history or facts along the way.
Warning: Not all hides within this series will be winter-friendly. Some of the stages are also more kid friendly than others; although as a family with young kids, we’ve tried to keep these as accessible as possible without losing some of the challenge.
WILWIC #2 - "Ye Ol' Fairgrounds"
While this area of Camrose is now arguably the heart of the recreational and cultural districts of the City, what you see here is drastically different than how it used to look. The area in and around Rudy Swanson Recreational Park used to also sound and smell a lot differently than it does today as well!
A number of older buildings in the area have connections to WWII and the post-war era. As you can see, the City's Community Centre is located immediately SW of the cache site. The Community Centre is made up of two distinct sections: the smaller eastern wing is currently being used as administrative offices and a school. This section of the building as you see it is actually just a "superstructure" which was built around the old "drill hall" (a newer and stronger structure was built around and outside the old drill hall structure, and the old structure is in fact being held up by the engineered new structure). The larger western wing of the building was only built a few years ago (in 2001) and consists of an indoor soccer field with change rooms and an upper level running track. Interestingly enough, the west wing was designed so that it could be quadrupled in size (to the west, north and northwest) at some point in the future.
Another interesting bit of history of this area can be found in the area of the soccer fields to the west of the Community Centre. Following WWII, this area of the city was used as an agricultural grounds, being home to various fairs, rodeos and exhibitions. As the City continued to grow in the mid-1900's, the City, County and the agricultural community came to an agreement to provide lands just outside the City limits on the east end of Camrose. The lands chosen, of course, is the current site of the Camrose Regional Exhibition (famous for hosting many major events, including the Big Valley Jamboree), which was developed in the early 1980's. The site of the old agricultural grounds became a major component of the Rudy Swanson Recreational Park (named after a former mayor of Camrose). Prior to the mid-2000's, you could still see the old horse racetrack within the park grounds. With a major upgrading project completed in the area, the City redeveloped these lands into 3 new soccer pitches, which are heavily used during the non-winter months by a variety of Camrose based teams.