In the early years, Ken Nelson stood at the edge of Horton's Lake — a purpose-built waterski lake carved out of the California desert — and had one thought: “I can do that.” No wind. No weeds. No boat traffic. Water designed for one thing.
What followed was more than a decade of searching. Working for Alberta Environment gave him access to aerial photography of the whole province, and he spent years studying it — looking for land flat enough to hold water, sheltered enough to kill wind, and close enough to Edmonton that people could actually come. One property kept standing out: a piece of the North Saskatchewan River valley, southwest of the city.
He first saw it in person in winter, snow covering everything, driving his son to ski training. You couldn't see the ground. But he'd memorized the aerials — and standing in the white, he could already see the shoreline, the dock, the course.
An abandoned gravel pit, foreclosed and forgotten — forty-two acres doing absolutely nothing. He bought it from the bank.
Construction began December 22, 1985 — after every plan, grade, and cubic metre of earth had been approved by the environment department, because you don't just dig a hole in a protected river valley. Excavators turned two leftover gravel ponds into a single competition lake: 2,100 feet long, 300 feet wide, its shoreline shaped to kill wind chop and wave rebound. The first man-made lake in Canada designed exclusively for waterski sports.
Months after it filled, the North Saskatchewan rose in a hundred-year flood and swallowed all of it — lake, dock, shoreline, course. When the water receded, Ken cut a drainage channel, dug out the mud, rebuilt, and within a couple of months hosted the Canadian National Barefoot Championships on the same water. That was 1986. The lake never looked back.
Since then: the 1996 World Junior Championships with thirty-four nations. Pro Tour stops. Canadian Opens and Canadian Nationals, again and again. The 2019 IWWF World Under-21 Championships — where Ken's grandsons Sean and Evan both won world titles on their grandfather's water. Jaret Llewellyn's world overall record in 2000, and Robert Pigozzi's junior slalom world record in 2015. Competitive skiers have ranked it among the top ten waterski sites in the world.
“It has been my mission for the past 40 years to share the joy of water skiing with all who are willing to give it a try.”
— Ken Nelson · WSWC Hall of Fame Pioneer, 2011
That mission is why this place refuses to choose between its two lives. More than 3,000 people have learned to ski here — five-year-olds, seventy-five-year-olds, corporate groups who'd never touched a rope — on the same glass the national team trains on. Three generations of one family still run the water: Kristy managing and coaching, Sean and Evan carrying world titles back to the dock they grew up on, and Ken, who still believes the best thing this lake produces is a first-timer's grin.
