Shellbrook's story begins in the late 19th century, when the first settlers came to the area west of Prince Albert. In 1894 a post office opened under the name of the Shell Brook, the stream that gave the community its name. That waterway is now called the Shell River and runs just north of town on its way to the Sturgeon River.
Larger numbers of settlers arrived in the early 20th century, many of them of British and Scandinavian origin. The community sits near the northern edge of agricultural settlement, where parkland meets boreal forest, so the newcomers had to clear jack pine forest before they could plant crops. The trees were useful too: logs were rafted down to Prince Albert, where many were made into railway ties.
In 1910 the Canadian Northern Railway reached Shellbrook from Prince Albert, and the town grew as a service centre for the farms around it. The railway station, built in 1909, now houses the town's museum. Today Shellbrook also has a library and a golf course rated among the best in the province, and Prince Albert National Park, regional parks and many lakes are a short drive away.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Shellbrook, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.