Eastend sits in the Frenchman River valley in south-west Saskatchewan, and its story goes back well before the town itself. A Métis settlement grew up north of the present townsite, and in the 1870s a Hudson's Bay Company trading post was set up in the region. The area was a prized hunting ground as bison disappeared from the eastern plains, and nearby First Nations often fought over it. The post lasted only one season. The site later became known as Chimney Coulee, named for the stone chimneys left from Métis homes.
The North-West Mounted Police set up a satellite detachment of Fort Walsh at Chimney Coulee in the late 1870s and called the area "East End" for its place on the east end of the Cypress Hills. When the Mounties later moved to the nearby townsite, the name became one word. The first ranch dates to 1883, and a ranch house built in 1902 was the community's first residence and is still lived in. Surveyors arrived in 1905, and the railway reached town in May 1914. J.C. Strong, the townsite's original owner, donated land for the first church, the cemetery, and a lot for the first baby born in town, Eastena, born that June.
In spring 1952, rapid melting of a record snowfall breached the Eastend Dam and flooded the town, which was evacuated for three days. A dyke was built along the river a few years afterward. Today Eastend is best known for "Scotty," a Tyrannosaurus rex found nearby in the 1990s, and the T.rex Discovery Centre, which opened in 2003 and is run by the Royal Saskatchewan Museum. Author Wallace Stegner lived in Eastend from 1914 to 1920 and wrote of it as "Whitemud" in Wolf Willow.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Eastend” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.