initial partition of agricultural land into farms of one-quarter section () would not last long and farm population would substantially reduce very quickly; the process accelerated in the 1970s when farmers began selling their land and retiring in substantial numbers to Fort Qu'Appelle as the custom of elderly farmers remaining at home with offspring passed into history, and more retired to town. The name "Qu'Appelle" comes from is French for 'who calls' and is derived from its Cree name, kah-tep-was (in Modern Plains Cree: kâ-têpwêt ᑳ ᑌᐻᐟ 'river that calls'). There are several versions of the origin of this name, but the most popular suggests it refers to a Cree legend of two ill-fated lovers." The name refers to the once-popular legend of the Qu'Appelle Valley versified by E. Pauline Johnson and known nation-wide. "Fort Qu'Appelle was the crossroads of a number of historic trails that traversed the North-West Territories." The town is immediately adjacent to the site of the original Fort Qu'Appelle Hudson's Bay Company trading post, whose "factory" is maintained as a historical site and museum. The Hudson's Bay trading post was built in 1864 when the company's activity was still largely confined to the fur trade with First Nations residents. "[P]emmican was shipped down valley on a Hudson's Bay Company cart trail to supply the paddlers of the fur trade in more forested regions." Despite the once well-known gathering of General Middleton and soldiers at Qu'Appelle, at the westernmost extreme of the still-incomplete Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) and some kilometres south of the Qu'Appelle Valley, "[i] Middleton empowered Captain French, an Irish officer who had been in the North-West Mounted Police (NWMP), to raise a mounted force in the vicinity of Fort Qu'Appelle. ... This mounted troop ... joined the 10th Royal Grenadiers from Toronto and the Winnipeg Field Battery under the command of artillery officer Lieutenant-Colonel C.E. Montizambert, to form the west-bank column that would march from Qu'Appelle to Batoche", where the notorious battling would occur. After ethnic European settlement by farmers had become established in the 1880s—a post office being established in 1880—the original Hudson's Bay Company activity was replaced by its department store on Broadway Street in 1897. By this time the fur trade had lapsed but the town community and farmers travelling into town for shopping had substantially increased in number. The store building remains though long disused by the Bay. There was