The vast prairie land of the Northwest Territories was opened for settlement during the latter part of the 1880s and 1890s. Prior to this, the whole area was home to the First Nations people and their culture. Settlement by Europeans and Americans followed the river valleys and then the westward movement of the railway.
The first early settlement in the Southey area consisted of ranchers north and south of the present townsite. H.B. Chandler, one of the first settlers, filed on land on the south side of town in 1903. When the railway arrived in the area, he applied for the site to be named “Southey”, after Robert Southey, one of his favorite English poets.
From this point on, the town grew and developed with the appearance of the first stores, school, banks, elevators, barber shop, hardware and implement dealers, restaurants, lumber yard, telephone system, sidewalks, fire brigades and others in the 1905 - 1912 period. This growth allowed Southey to be incorporated in 1907-08. Subsequently, streets were named after other English writers and poets, so it is possible to travel down streets named Keats, Browning, Burns, Byron, Coleridge, Frost, Kipling, Milton and others.
