This facility is a prime example of a ceramic industry that thrived here during the early and middle 20th century.
This factory was originally called The Medicine Hat Potteries and it was completed in 1938 by HC Yuill, owner of the giant neighboring Alberta Clay Products, a huge brick and tile company. The Medicine Hat Potteries plant was state-of-the art and built to compete with the long established and successful Medalta Potteries located about 1/2 kilometer to the northeast. The Medicine Hat Potteries plant made the table ware and crockery that you would have found on store shelves across Western Canada during the 1920s to 1950s. In 1955 the company was renamed Hycroft China by its new owner, and the buildings bear this logo to this day.
2. In 1913 Medicine Hat was an industrial boom town.
It was the home of a great variety of manufacturing industries that made everything from tractors
to crayons, textiles to lumber products, candy to beer. The population in 1913
would not be exceeded for another 40 years. The city was
particularly well suited to the ceramic industry for three key reasons: quality clay, abundant natural gas, and
its location on the
main CPR rail line. Rudyard Kipling once visited our city and made reference
to these gas resources by coining the phrase "The city with all hell for
a basement".
3. This facility is a tribute to the determination and craftsmanship of
ordinary people who created a pottery industry here in the early
20th century.
On this tour we will introduce you to our pottery history and overview
the materials, processes and products. We will try to give you a sense of what it was
like to work in a large pottery and who some of the people were that spent their productive
adult years making pottery products in this plant.
This presentation was originally used as an electronic tour for the Friends of Medalta Society. It was installed on Kiosks and created by Tony Hansen, the author of this site.
4. The Medalta Potteries Buildings.
These buildings are nearby and were the home of perhaps the best known and longest lived of the heavy
stoneware manufacturing companies in the area. The Medalta name graces stoneware than can be found in
homes and collections across Canada and the United States. This was the first western company to ship
manufactured goods to the industrialized east.
