09/14/2026
This is what the Plainsman site looked like (long before Plainsman existed) 116 years ago this month back in September 1910. 🔥
At the time, the main building of the Alberta Clay Products factory was just nearing completion.
This heavy ceramics industry was a massive operation and would go on to produce vitrified sewer pipes, brick, flue linings, and drainage tiles used across North America for over 50 years.
The factory succumbed to fire in the early 1960s.
A few years later a little clay company called Plainsman would then start operating out of the side buildings of the burned out ACP factory before eventually constructing a new building on the site in the early 1970s.
Plainsman still operates here today - surrounded by the ghosts of numerous ceramic factories in the nationally recognized Historic Clay District in Medicine Hat, Alberta.
The legacy of this place is literally in our dirt.
Fragments of dishes, brick, crocks, toilets, etc. are scattered across our site from a time long before Plainsman Clays was the last clay manufacturer in the district.
It's a reminder of the ceramic heritage we're carrying forward today. We were built on the foundations of the giants that came before us.
