On this day in 1979, the city's plan for naming the roads in Riverbend's new neighbourhoods came to light.
Edmonton was in a housing boom in the 1970s. Driven by high oil prices, cheap land, and a wave of Baby Boomers looking to buy their first homes, the city was expanding at a dizzying speed. Much of this growth was on the edges of the city, with Edmonton's first real municipal development plan favouring single-family homes.
Riverbend was a creation of that era. When city council approved the plan to develop the area in 1979, it was on the very southwest outskirts of the city. While there had been some residential construction in neighbourhoods such as Ramsey Heights and Brookside a decade before, most of the area was still farmland and rural properties.
The plan recommended continued development of the three existing neighbourhoods — Ramsey Heights, Brookside, and Brander Gardens — and six new ones: Ogilvie Ridge, Bulyea Heights, Falconer Heights, Henderson Estates, Carter Crest, and Rhatigan Ridge. The newer neighbourhoods would extend all the way to the city's southern border, near the modern-day 23rd Avenue.
Even then, there were plans to expand even further south. The 1979 plan mentions future connections to the Terwillegar area "should annexation occur." That would happen in 1982, when the largest annexation in Edmonton's history effectively doubled the city's footprint.
From the start, much of the development in the Riverbend neighbourhoods was focused on high-end homes, with easy access to the river valley and views of downtown heavily promoted as selling features. In fact, the neighbourhood of Ogilvie Ridge was apparently planned and marketed as a gated community early on, although that changed.
The Riverbend neighbourhoods continued to grow over the 1980s and '90s, and the city's borders continued to expand outwards. The original Riverbend Community League, which was founded in the early '70s, used to cover the entire area. But as the population grew, community leagues emerged for areas such as Brookview and The Ridge.
Today, Riverbend is nowhere close to Edmonton's edge. Terwillegar Drive, once a rural two-lane road winding through the new suburbs, is under construction to be expanded into a four-lane freeway to accommodate increasing traffic. And that southward expansion continues. In 2019, Edmonton annexed a large amount of land from Leduc County in anticipation of further growth. A service study of the area is due at the end of 2026.
This clipping was found on Vintage Edmonton, a daily look at Edmonton's history from armchair archivist Rev Recluse of Vintage Edmonton.