The Battleford area was a fur trade district long before there was a town. From the 1770s, independent companies and the Hudson's Bay Company kept trading houses near where the Battle and North Saskatchewan rivers meet. William Holmes ran a North West Company post there in 1784, and the Hudson's Bay Company opened its Battle River post around 1868.
The town itself was founded in 1875 as a fur trading post and North-West Mounted Police fort. Its post office opened in 1877. From 1876 to 1883, Battleford served as the capital of the North-West Territories, a vast region that took in what are now Alberta, Saskatchewan and more. Old Government House, built in 1878-1879, was the seat of territorial government until 1883. The Battleford Industrial School, a residential school for First Nations children run under federal policy aimed at assimilation, opened in 1883 and operated until 1914.
In March 1885, during the North-West Rebellion, a party of Cree who were short of food as bison numbers declined came to the town. Its 500 residents took shelter at Fort Battleford while the Cree took food and supplies from the empty stores and houses. Two people died in the looting, and two men were later convicted of murder and hanged. The Canadian Pacific Railway reached the area in 1888, and the Hudson's Bay Company opened a new store in 1892, which closed in 1910.
Today Battleford sits across the river from North Battleford, and the two are known together as The Battlefords. Agriculture drives the local economy. Fort Battleford and the Battleford Court House are national historic sites, and the town's heritage buildings include the Land Registry Office from the territorial era.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Battleford” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.