They call Maple Creek the Old Cow Town, and the nickname fits. This small Saskatchewan town of about two thousand people grew up in the 1880s as a ranching centre when the Canadian Pacific Railway came through, and cattle are still the backbone of the local economy. The main street has old brick buildings, a western-wear store and a museum full of ranching history, and on a quiet afternoon it feels like the place has not changed much in a century.
South of town rise the Cypress Hills, a plateau that stands several hundred metres above the surrounding prairie and was never covered by the glaciers that flattened the rest of the plains. The highest point, on the Alberta side, is the highest ground between the Rockies and Labrador. The hills are covered in lodgepole pine, aspen and fescue grassland, and they are home to elk, moose, deer and many birds that seem out of place on the prairie. The Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park straddles the Alberta and Saskatchewan border, and Highway 21 from Maple Creek leads up into the Centre Block in a series of gentle climbs with growing views over the plains.
The hills have a dark chapter. In 1873, American wolf hunters and traders killed a group of Assiniboine people in the Cypress Hills Massacre, an event that pushed the Canadian government to send the newly formed North-West Mounted Police west. They built Fort Walsh in the hills in 1875, and the rebuilt fort, now a national historic site, can be reached from the park on a road through the forest. The story of the Mounties, the whiskey traders and the Indigenous people is told well there.
For riders, the roads around Maple Creek are about space rather than corners: long, straight prairie highways with huge skies and few cars, broken by the climb into the hills. The Gap Road between the park blocks is gravel and can be slippery when wet. Maple Creek has fuel, food and basic accommodation, but Medicine Hat, about an hour west, is the nearest city with full services. Wind can be strong and storms build quickly in summer, so keep an eye on the sky.