White settlement did not begin until 1902 at that time centred on a rural community about east of present-day Westlock. The founding family was named Edgson, but this was considered too hard to pronounce. Edson, Alberta already existed, so the site was called Edison by its Irish-Canadian founders, after the American inventor Thomas Edison. The community in 1912 consisted of a total of no more than 13 buildings: a harness shop, a blacksmith shop, several homes, two churches, and one family living in a tent. There was also a post office but this was closed in 1911 when Conservative Party came to power and fired many Liberals from the postal service. In 1911 the railway reached nearby Clyde to the east, and in 1912 the "E.D. & B.C. Railway" (later the Northern Alberta Railway, now part of CN) mapped a new townsite where Westlock now stands to the west. Edison was now caught between the two. In 1914, the Methodist church building was picked up and moved down the road to Westlock, an indication of the new settlement's ascendancy over the older one.