Sintaluta takes its name from the Lakota phrase siŋté lúta, meaning 'red tail,' a reference to the tail of the red fox. Long before the railway arrived, pioneers heading west stopped here to refresh their supplies, and in 1881 the first stopping house was set up on the site. A classroom opened soon after 1882, and church services were held in the stopping house and schools until the Presbyterians built a wooden church in 1887. The Canadian Pacific Railway's first section foreman arrived in 1886, and the first station opened in 1898.
After Saskatchewan became a province in 1905, residents applied for town status, and Sintaluta was incorporated in 1907. A large stone school built in 1899 burned in 1905 and was replaced by a two-storey brick school in 1907, with bricks bought from a factory in Lebret. The Methodists built a brick church in 1899, and the Anglican stone church and manse still stand, carefully preserved by the local history club.
Sintaluta is best remembered for grain. After a bumper wheat crop in 1901, farmers watched trains leave without taking their grain, and local men, including Edward Alexander Partridge, took the CPR to court and won. The CPR then described Sintaluta as the largest grain shipping point in Western Canada, and the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool later made a film of the story, The Long Haul. The town was also home to the founder of what became United Grain Growers and to the first editor of the Grain Growers Guide.
Sintaluta once had seven elevator companies, and two elevators remain today in private hands. The town is also the administrative headquarters of the Carry the Kettle Nakoda Nation band government.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Sintaluta” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.