Regina was established in 1882 when it became clear that Edgar Dewdney, the lieutenant-governor of the North-West Territories, eschewed the previously established and considered Battle ford, Troy and Fort Qu'Appelle (the latter two both some 30 mi (48 km) to the east), as the territorial seat of government: these were widely considered more amiable locations for what was anticipated would be a far more major metropolis for the Canadian plains than actually eventuated, situated as they were in amply watered and treed rolling parklands whereas "Pile-of-Bones," as the site was then called, was in the midst of arid and featureless grassland. When Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, and her husband, the then Governor General of Canada, passed through the still unnamed territorial capital in 1882, she named the new community Regina, after her mother, the Queen.
Lieutenant-Governor Dewdney had acquired land adjacent to the route of the future CPR line at Pile-of-Bones, which was distinguished only by collections of bison bones near a small spring run-off creek, some few kilometres downstream from its origin in the midst of what are now wheat fields. There was an "obvious conflict of interest" in Dewdney's choosing the site of Pile-of-Bones as the territorial seat of government. and it was a national scandal at the time. But until 1897, when responsible government was accomplished in the Territories, the lieutenant-governor and council governed by fiat and there was little legitimate means of challenging such decisions outside the federal capital of Ottawa. There, the Territories were remote and of little concern.
Commercial considerations prevailed and the town's authentic development soon began as a collection of wooden shanties and tent shacks clustered around the site designated by the CPR for its future station, some two miles (3 km) to the east of where Dewdney had reserved substantial landholdings for himself and where he sited the Territorial
