N. ELDON TANNER HOUSE "ROCKYVIEW"
Firm: unknown
Address: 9330 Lower Springbank Road SW/187 Slopeview Drive
Date: 1957
Status: standing
After he stepped down as chairman of Trans-Canada Pipe Lines in December 1958, Eldon Tanner and his wife set out to build a home for their retirement. They chose a 30 acre lot in Springbank on the property of Rockyview Farms, owned by the Longeway family. Their property was adjacent to "Cliffcrest," the home of their daughter Ruth and her husband Cliff Walker. In Eldon Tanner's biography, N. Eldon Tanner: His Life and Service, author G. Homer Durham quotes Eldon's wife Sara, who talked about the house's history:
"The last four years in Calgary I spent planning and building and living for eight months in my dream house, and we had what we thought was an ideal set-up–plenty of house and land, good help, grandchildren close, horses for them to ride, and we were planning to build a swimming pool for them in the summer of 1961. Then came the call to Eldon to be a General Authority, and our life changed overnight."
The home was completed in May 1960 and the Tanners lived in it only until January 1961. In Feburary they sold the house to D. Bruce Bullock (1922–2010).
This house appears at 5:38 in the 1962 tourism film Calgary: The Living West. It is located on a large estate property west of the city on Lower Springbank Road (formerly Bragg Creek Trail). It was remodelled in 1996 and the roofline changed somewhat then.
THE CLIENT
Nathan Eldon Tanner (1898–1982) was born on 9 May 1898 in Salt Lake City to Nathan William Tanner (1870–1948) and Sarah Edna Brown (1878–1959), and was the eldest of eight children. He was descended from Mayflower passengers Francis Cooke and Richard Warren. At a young age his family moved to a farm in Southern Alberta. Nathan attended grades 1 to 9 in Aetna and then completed high school in Cardston. He then attended night school in Raymond and subsequently went to the Calgary Normal School. In 1919 he got his first teaching position at a school in Hill Spring. In 1929 he became the principal of the Cardston school.
In 1935 Tanner was elected to the Alberta Legislature as a member of the Social Credit Party under the leadership of William Aberhart. From 1935 to 1937 he was Speaker of the Legislature, and in 1937 he became Minister of Lands and Mines, a position he held until leaving politics in 1952.
In 1952, Tanner became president of Sturdie Propane Limited and Merrill Petroleums. In 1954 Tanner was made president of the new Trans-Canada Pipe Lines Limited. In mid 1957 he relinquished the presidency and assumed the chairmanship, which he held until December 1958. Tanner remained a director until the end of 1960. He also held directorships with the Toronto-Dominion Bank, National Trust Company, Inland Cement, and Alberta Gas Trunk Line.
Tanner was called as an Assistant to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles in the Church of Latter Day Saints in late 1960 . At this time he and his wife relocated to Salt Lake City. For the remainder of his life he held senior leadership roles with the LDS.
In 1919 Tanner married Sara Isabelle Merrill (1989–1992), who had also been a teacher at the school in Hill Spring. They had five daughters: Ruth, Isabelle, Zola, Beth, and Helen. Tanner died 27 November 1982 at age 84 in Salt Lake City.