The Leader area was a hunting ground long before settlement; a Folsom point found there was dated by the University of Saskatchewan to 8,000 to 9,000 years ago. The town lies in the traditional territory of the Nekaneet First Nation, signatories to Treaty 4. Homesteaders arrived in large numbers from 1907, most of them German immigrants from Prussia or southern Russia. An RCMP detachment opened in 1909 and made sure settlers had enough supplies to last the winter.
The Canadian Pacific Railway bought a quarter section in 1911 for a townsite, and the railway arrived in 1913. The village of Prussia was incorporated that September, with general store owner Hans Quittenbaum as its first reeve. By 1917, anti-German feeling during the First World War led the community to drop its name and replace German street names with numbers. A contest won by two local girls, Bertha Keller and Muriel Legault, chose the name Leader, inspired by the Regina Morning Leader newspaper arriving on the passenger train. The change became official on September 27, 1917, and Leader became a town on November 1.
Local rancher W.T. Smith built what was then North America's largest barn, finished in 1914 after 100 men worked five months. It was taken down in 1921, but its concrete foundation remains as a provincial heritage site. The town grew after World War II, peaking at 1,236 people in 1966. In 1995 balloonist Steve Fossett landed nearby after the first solo Pacific balloon flight, and in 2006 residents posed for a calendar to protest the state of Highway 32, which was rebuilt by 2010. Today Leader is a trading centre for a farming and cattle area, near the Great Sand Hills.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Leader, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.