Lloydminster

Intended to be an exclusively British Utopian settlement centered around the idea of sobriety, the town was founded in 1903 by the Barr Colonists, who came directly from the British Isles. At a time when the area was still part of the Northwest Territories, the town was located astride the Fourth Meridian of the Dominion Land Survey, or 110° west longitude.

The town was named for Anglican Bishop George Exton Lloyd, a strong opponent of non-British immigration to Canada. He had deposed the Barr Colony's leader and namesake Isaac Montgomery Barr during the colonists' journey to the eventual townsite.

When the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan were created in 1905, the Fourth Meridian was selected as the border, bisecting the town. For the next quarter century, Lloydminster remained two separate towns with two separate municipal administrations, but in 1930 the provincial governments agreed to amalgamate the towns into a single town under shared jurisdiction. The provinces, again jointly, reincorporated Lloydminster as a city in 1958.

Commemorating Lloydminster's unique bi-provincial status, a monument consisting of four 100-foot survey markers was erected in 1994 near the city's downtown core.

Although the majority of Lloydminster's population used to live in Saskatchewan, that ratio has long since been reversed. With the bulk of the city's recent growth taking place on the Alberta side of the border, it has become known to most Canadians as Lloydminster, Alberta. In 2000, the city hall and municipal offices were re-located from Saskatchewan to Alberta.