Homesteaders began settling the Bengough area around 1906. In 1911 the community was incorporated as a village, the same year the Canadian Northern Railway built a rail line to it. The town takes its name from John Wilson Bengough, the cartoonist.
Bengough grew into an agricultural hub for the surrounding farm country, with grain elevators run by Federal Grain Limited, Parrish Heimbecker Ltd. and the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool standing within the town limits. It was incorporated as a town in 1958. The railway through town is no longer in operation, and as of 2007 only the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool elevator was still working, owned and run by a local farmer organization.
Agriculture, mixed farming and ranching, is still the main industry. Bengough & District Regional Park, founded in 1975 on land donated by the RM of Bengough No. 40, along with a cash donation from the town and capital investment from the provincial Department of Tourism & Renewable Resources, offers a campground, a golf course that opened in 1980, and an outdoor pool. Each year on the fourth weekend of July, the town hosts the Gateway Festival, a family-friendly folk and roots festival that has welcomed performers such as Steve Earle, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tom Cochrane and Colter Wall.
Written from Wikipedia’s article “Bengough, Saskatchewan” (CC BY-SA 4.0), and shared under the same licence.