Although Wikipedia stated as of March 17, 2020:
By 1795, Fort Edmonton was established on the river's north bank as a major trading post for the Hudson's Bay Company,...
It should be noted that this fort was at the mouth of the Sturgeon River in present-day Fort Saskatchewan.
The new fort's name was suggested by John Peter Pruden after Edmonton, a suburb of London, the hometown of both Pruden himself and the HBC deputy governor Sir James Winter Lake.
The fort was moved around but finally in 1813 it was built permanently in Edmonton's Rossdale. This began Edmonton's start as a permanent population centre. People are known to have lived in the flats and the area around it ever since.
It had of course been a gathering place for Crees, Stonies and others for many, many, many years.
The flats at Rossdale were a wonderful meeting place - accessible by fords across the river, one under the HLB, the other near the Low Level Bridge. It would not be until 1900 that the first bridge would be built across the river.
It is said that the fords were used by the Old Wolf Trail that ran from Mexico to the Barren lands of the North to cross the river.
Fur traders sought to access the long-standing trade route.
Many whitemen's forts were built on the flats - Frank Oliver recalled in 1920 seeing remains of old forts scattered along the riverside when he arrived in area in the 1870s. One was even over near the mouth of Groat Ravine in Victoria Cricket park, Some say this may have been an old New France fort from before the Conquest of New France by British troops in the 1700s.
source: Goyette, Edmonton In Our Own Words, xxiii
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