St. Walburg takes its name from the wife of the town's first postmaster, and also honours Saint Walpurga, an eighth-century English nun educated by the Benedictines who was canonized for her evangelical work among the German people.
The town and the country around it were first settled mainly by Germans, who arrived between the 1910s and 1930s. A few Polish, Ukrainian and French settlers came later. One early homesteader was Count Berthold von Imhoff, an artist known for his religious murals and paintings, who took up land southwest of town in 1914. In 1937 Pope Pius XI awarded him a knighthood in the Pontifical Order of St. Gregory the Great. His home, studio and farm, now the Imhoff Museum, became a Saskatchewan Heritage Property in 1993.
The Canadian Northern Railway pushed its northwest branch line out from North Battleford and reached St. Walburg in 1919. The arrival set off a boom, and homesteaders came within months, now able to deliver their grain to the elevators in town. The branch was later abandoned by the Canadian National Railway after the last elevators closed in 2005, and officially in 2008.
Today grain and cattle farming are the main industries, with oil and natural gas playing a growing part in the area.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “St. Walburg, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.