Fort Walsh Saskatchewan to Havre Montana and Fort Benton Montana in 34 hours

the hoosecow

Beautiful rolling hills, but one wonders why they didn't build the fort down below on the flat badlands. Okay, hunting might be tricky but all that climbing and dragging heavy stuff around....geesh. Like a 9lb cannon, that must have taken several oxen to drag it up and over the hills and  then chase the indians with it.

Life was challenging in those days, but the pay was good...1 dollar a day. 

exact as could be determined, reproduction of the hoosecow. Two to a room. 

Buffalo hide bedding, although originally the floors were mud and the roof was sod., I know that buffalo hide can keep you warm at 30 below. 

Fort Walsh Saskatchewan is in east side of Cypress Hills, accessed through Maple Creek down a narrow asphalt road. By the time we decided to take the eastern block road , it was about 2:00 p.m and
all along  the 45 minute drive we enjoyed the beautiful countryside and heard the birdsong. This is pretty rough country for a lot of the trip,  suddenly you leave the badlands and you are in lush green and forested foothills. Deep valleys and windy hairpin roads take you to the fort.  This is a National Heritage Site and the actors go out of their way to make the tour as realistic as possible. They even arrested a couple of kids and put them on trial. Everyone enjoyed the show. Being the last day of the season, they had closed the cook house but we are told they do a pretty mean bannock. 

Beneath the streets of Havre are very famous. Years ago after a fire set by disgruntled drunken cowboys, the town was burnt to the ground and because of a shortage of building materials to reconstruct, the townsfolk took their businesses down below into the basements of the original brick buildings, they tunneled between the buildings and under the sidewalks,  adding glass blocks into the concrete of the overhead walkways for some natural light. This photo is a depiction of the bootleggers office where he met the likes of Al Capone, who bought the whiskey transported from MooseJaw. These stories are all true. The worst of it was that there was NO police, only the Cavalry and because they were too out numbered to do anything the town just got worse and worse. Only recently was this town renamed to Havre, it used to be called Bullhook Bottom. A very apt name. Main employers were, the saloon, prostitution, opium dens, bootlegging, railway and saddlery. Some honest folk set up their bakery, pharmacy and meat market but they were also down below with the bad 'uns.

The bakery...no ventilation other than the cracks in the walls and ceilings,

The pharmacy

chinese laundry ...how culturally sensitive the maniqins are

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Fort Walsh, Sask Notice the british flag.  It is so quiet here that it makes your ears ring.
We thought we would be smart and take what appeared on the map to be a paved road, the # 615 south, to a road that then went west to take us to the Wild Horse border crossing. As the Willow creek crossing closed at 5:00p.m., as it was already 4:45 p.m., we had to find an alternate crossing to the west Wild Horse,  this meant more time on the road, however, we were fed, watered and peed and we thought we were good to go. The first 100 yards of the road were great, okay they were gravel but how bad can this get? We soon answered the question and it was a hard slogging 100 kms of rutting rocky not so much gravel as boulder road, just to get to the 41 south in Alberta,  but we were committed by this time as I had paid for our hotel room in Havre and by gum we were going to get there if it killed us. We nearly lost our fillings by the time we bust out of the badlands and onto a paved road.
Here is the interesting part, in the late 1800's Sitting Bill walked his people from Fort Assiniboia Montana (Havre) to Fort Walsh to negotiate a treaty (with all his people) and when he got there, Colonel Walsh had left for Regina,. ARGHHHH! wouldn't that just  tick you off. So he went to Regina, and Walsh had left for Ontario. So they went back to Montana and you know the rest.