Hanley was founded in 1902 and became a town in 1906. Early founders named it after Hanley, Staffordshire, in England. It sits about 65 kilometres south of Saskatoon on Highway 11 and is the seat of the Rural Municipality of Rosedale No. 283.
Thousands of settlers came to the area in the early 20th century, after land speculators had procured the land. They arrived from the United Kingdom, Eastern Canada, the United States and Scandinavia. Many descendants of Norwegian settlers still live in the area, along with a substantial Mennonite-German community. Farmers grow wheat, barley, canola, alfalfa, hay, flax, oats, rye and specialty crops, and there is also cattle ranching and other specialty livestock production.
For many years, up until the 1960s, Hanley was an important trading and business centre for the region, and several railroads were expected to come through. The town had an opera house, one of the few in Canada, as well as the Lawrence House Mansion and one of the largest and finest brick schools in the region. All are now gone, and so are the grain elevators and train station, though the Canadian National line between Saskatoon and Regina still runs through town.
Today Hanley has a school, an RCMP depot, churches, a post office and some businesses, and a number of young families have moved in over the past few years. Hanley Composite School is a K-12 school, home of the Sabers, who won the 2009 provincial 1A 6-man football championship.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Hanley, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.