The Dam That Lit Winnipeg Was Abandoned in 1951 - Here's What Remains

More than a hundred years ago, this spot on the Winnipeg River was the cutting edge of hydroelectric technology in Manitoba. Today, nature is slowly taking it back. This is the Pinawa Dam. It started delivering power in 1906 and was Manitoba's first hydroelectric generating station. It shut down in 1951, and what's left is a ghost of a power plant you can walk right through. In today's video, we're exploring the ruins, The Trails, and the story of the town this dam once powered. Before we get started, I want to give a huge thank you to Bearskin Tactical Supply Company for sponsoring my Manitoba adventure. Throughout this trip, I wore a variety of Bearskin gear, including the Bearskin Hoodie 4.0, Heavy Storm Rain Jacket, Sunbeater Hoodie, Rancher Shirt, and the Bearskin Sorona T-Shirt. If you're looking for tactical or outdoor gear for your own adventures, you'll find a link in the video description where you can shop Bearskin Tactical and check out their gear for yourself. So now we're at the ruins of the Pinua Hydroelectric Plant. I hope I said that right. Pinawa. Pinawa. Pinawa. Pinawa. You guys tell me. So where we are is this was the first year-round operating hydroelectric plant in the province of Manitoba. And I'll give you guys some more information about this place. When I do a voiceover because right now I'm just here and I don't have all this knowledge and information in my head but there would have been a massive hydroelectric power plant here and on the other side over there there's the dam we're going to go over there and see that that's a big old dam and now it's basically a provincial heritage park where people can come and walk the ruins of the hydroelectric plant and the dam so this was kind of interesting to me so I wanted to make this my first official stop here on my trip to Manitoba. So let's keep walking guys and we'll see what's going on over there. Coming up on some stuff here. A little bit of a walkway over there. You can walk down here by the water. Seems to be some rushing water. Let's go see what's going on over here guys. This is nice. Pinawa was the first all-season hydroelectric plant in Manitoba and the first on the Winnipeg River. Power started flowing in June of 1906. Okay let's go across the bridge here. Not allowed to swim in here. Must be dangerous. Pretty serious undertow, I bet, underneath here. Something tells me it's gonna be pretty cool when we get up here to the other side of the dam. Building the power plant and dam took three years, with no paved roads or railways to the site. Horses, steam power, and a lot of human muscle did the work. The concrete here was made from blasted Canadian shield granite. It's been standing for over a century. All the concrete's so worn away. Wow. You can see a big piece of rebar right in the concrete there. Oh man it's so neat over here. Spillway viewpoint. Okay. No diving that's for sure. Dangerous guys. To build the dam, the water was deliberately slowed down. That flooded large areas of land upstream. The ruins walk is only about 0.7 kilometers long. Along the way, 13 signs tell the story of the dam and the people who lived here. Pinawa shut down in 1951, when a larger, more efficient dam was built downstream. Since then, the site has slowly been returned to nature. Here's some pretty crazy running water over here, guys. Oh, I think I can see it. We've got to go up here, I think, and get to it. Sounds pretty awesome, though. Whoa, there's a big crack down there. Oh, man. Big cracks everywhere here, guys. Guys, be careful. Here we go. Here it is. A little bit of a waterfall here, guys. Step over the crack. Here we go. Let's just take a look around. There's the part of the dam where we came from. Okay. We've got a little bridge here. We'll walk over. All right, so now we're gonna go to the far side of the dam here. I guess they call this the spillway. I'm gonna go, maybe we'll go this way. Gotta go over there. But I'm just following the path here, okay guys? Hmm, okay, I think I wanna start this way. Even though there's nothing for you guys to see right now, it's gonna be pretty neat. The dam was built to feed Winnipeg's streetcars. In the early 1900s, the city was booming, and the Winnipeg Electric Railway Company needed cheap power for about 35 streetcars. I am not running. The hardest part is that I am not driving. I will get away with it before I can be on the track. Oh, that's pretty cool guys. Yep, yep, I like it. We wouldn't have enough power left to get past those cars. I think I will get that run. Oh my god. I am not going to make it. Watch this. It's gonna be pretty cool. This is going to be really hard. I should be able to do this. This is not the race. Wait for it. Look at this. Oh my god. I can't even go. Oh my god. Oh my god. I am not going to make it. This place just keeps going. The hardest part is to get out of the race. I need to be able to get out of the race. I have a bad chance of winning. I am going to have to leave it. I just need to get out of the race before the race is over. I will do it one last time. Wow, that's crazy. This is going to be fun. Okay, so it looks like if we go back this way, we can get on top of this dam here, and we can walk to the other side, and there's some turbines and stuff on the other side there, so we're going to go back, and we're going to go walk on top of this, okay? So let's go back up this way. Power traveled to Winnipeg over a transmission line at 60,000 volts. The generators here made only 2,200 volts, so transformers boosted it for the long trip. So there's some plaques here. Hmm. Pinawa Generating Station, 1906-1951. I'll read you this stuff later in my voiceover guys. Not reading it all right now. Let's go do this. So this here likely would have been the actual power plant right here and this would have been filled with turbines and generators and all the water would have been pouring through here turning the generators and the turbines to produce the The very first power flowed to Winnipeg on June 9th, 1906. Four generators, 2,500 horsepower each, got things started. The last switch was thrown at 5.58 p.m. on September 21st, 1951. The final crew was an operator, two oilers, and a cleaner. Okay guys, here we got some turbines here. Man, those things would spin so fast with all the pressure of the water. Okay, so we can go up on top. Where we just were there. If we can go look from the upper part here. Getting my steps in today guys. Oh boy. There would have been so much more here. Before they demolished it all. So the water would have just poured through here guys. Like crazy. Through there. Into the power station. Over here. So this right here would have all been underwater. Just crazy rushing water coming from over here. Pouring in through those little holes there. Over here. Through the power station. Generating hall and then back out into the water again. Crazy guys, crazy. All right I think I want to throw my drone up since we're here. This will make some pretty cool drone footage to be able to see all this from above. So let's get the drone out guys and we'll go up in the sky and while I'm flying the drone I'll teach you guys a thing or two. So stick around for a little bit of a Manitoba hydroelectric power history lesson courtesy of Uncle Freak-tography. Let's go. From up here, you can see how small this place really is. A ribbon of water, a wall of concrete, and a whole lot of Manitoba wilderness pressing in on all sides. Over a century ago, a few hundred people and 36 teams of horses built something here that didn't exist anywhere else in the province. They hauled equipment across the river on barges, laid miles of log roads through muskeg, And cut channels through solid Canadian Shield granite, all for 10 cents an hour. And it worked! In June of 1906, the power started flowing to Winnipeg. And for 45 years, through brutal winters and thick river ice, this plant kept the lights on and the streetcars moving. Then, one September evening in 1951, someone threw the last switch. The generators went quiet, the town emptied out, and the forest started taking the place back. But look at it now! The spillway is still standing. The concrete is still here, even after the army tried to knock it down. A small group of volunteers still keeps this place alive, so that people like us can walk through it and remember. That's what I loved about exploring Manitoba. Sometimes the most interesting stories are the quiet ones, sitting right beside the road, waiting for someone to stop and look.