Goodwater's story starts with homesteaders. Families named Juell, who came from Norway by way of the United States, were among the first settlers around 1902, and the place was known as Juell, with Juell Creek still running south of town. When the Canadian Northern Railway pushed a branch line through in 1909 to 1911, its surveyors had trouble finding water until they struck it at 12 feet, "good water and in abundance." The name Goodwater followed. The line from Luxton to Ceylon opened on July 11, 1911, and the village incorporated that May.
Businesses were already in place when the village was surveyed in 1910, among them Kelly and Hobbs's general store, which began in a tent, a cafe, a blacksmith shop and a hardware store. By 1913 two grain elevators stood in town. The Kelly family kept the general store going for decades, and the post office served from 1911 until 1985. Goodwater's population peaked at 123 in 1921.
The 1930s brought drought, dust storms and grasshoppers, and the bank closed in 1936. The winter of 1946-47 cut the village off from trains for more than two weeks. Floods damaged the track toward Blewett in 1948, regular train service ended in 1959, and the last train left Goodwater on December 13, 1979.
The community has long been built around grain and livestock, and hockey has been a local pastime since shinny on Juell Creek in the 1910s. In 1959 a volunteer crew of 65 built the Goodwater Memorial Rink in four days, and Premier Tommy Douglas came to open it. In 2011 the village marked its 100th anniversary with a three-day celebration.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Goodwater, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.