Birtle, Manitoba

Birtle is an unincorporated urban community in the Prairie View Municipality within the Canadian province of Manitoba that held town status prior to January 1, 2015. It is located at the junction of Highways 83 and 42.

Originally incorporated in 1884, the community lies in the Birdtail River valley. It features a spacious community park developed in the early years of the community with additions through the years to bring it to the current time where the original golf course designed to take advantage of the valley contours now enjoys the modern amenities and the tennis courts still located in the original location now feature modern plexipave surfaces and are some of the best in western Manitoba.

Another attraction is the Birdtail Country Museum, housed in an historicTemplate:Http://www.mhs.mb.ca/docs/sites/birdtailmuseum.shtml stone building on Main Street. The building was built in the early 1900s to be used as the Union Bank. Later it was purchased by the Royal Bank of Canada. The main floor was the bank premises. The second floor was the bank manager's living-quarters.

In 1983, the building was purchased by the former town and the former Rural Municipality of Birtle. It officially opened as the Birdtail Country Museum on May 24, 1984, as a joint centennial project of the former town and former rural municipality. Inside are more than 4,000 artifacts related to the area, including such historical items such as the diaries of original settlers (Alfred Morton's, from 1878), button hooks for ladies' boots, and ice-saws and ice-tongs used for harvesting ice from the Birdtail River in the winter. The Museum houses the trophies awarded to Samuel Larcombe, one of the early settlers of Birtle. In 1917, Larcombe, the "World Wheat King", developed a variety of rust-resistant wheat. The second floor of the Museum is set up to resemble a Victorian home. People often come to the Museum to do genealogy research through the microfilm reader, which contains every edition of the Birtle 'Eye Witness' newspaper, dating back to 1891. Local history books for the community and surrounding districts provide additional sources of information.

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