Before European settlers arrived, First Nations people, most likely Plains Cree, lived on the land around Harris. Signs of that time can still be found in the Bear Hills to the north, where a turtle effigy, vision quest sites, a cluster of nine stone rings and rock cairns mark the landscape.
The village takes its name from Richard Elford Harris, an Ontario-born carriage maker and carpenter who headed west in 1904 with his two sons and a daughter. They came from Saskatoon along the Old Bone Trail, and their sod house became known as the Harris Stopping Place, where settlers and their animals could rest and get a hot meal before the Harris men escorted them to their homesteads. A store, a Methodist church and a post office followed, with Mr. Harris as first postmaster.
When surveyors planned the Canadian Northern's Goose Lake Line two miles away, the townsfolk bought land along the new route and moved the whole community to mile 52. The Harris name went along with the post office. The first train came through in the fall of 1908, and Harris became a village on August 10, 1909. A telephone company arrived in 1916, power in 1930, natural gas in 1955 and a water system in 1976.
In the summer of 1914 Harris was the setting for the Great Ruby Rush. An American miner named Alex McCarthy found red stones in the Bear Hills and showed them to the Gordon Brothers, who ran the Commercial Hotel. Thousands of prospectors poured in before the "rubies" proved to be worthless garnets, and rumours of a hoax lingered for years. Today the original rock sits outside the Harris Museum, and the hotel is called the Ruby Rock Pub & Grill. Several early buildings, including two churches, a bank and a wooden water tower, are designated Municipal Heritage Properties.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Harris, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.