Cypress Hills is an Interprovincial park that straddles the Alberta Saskatchewan border on the Canadian prairies. It sits on the highest point between the Canadian Rockies and Labrador. During the last ice age it was spared by the retreating glacier and sits on a rise nearly 2,000 feet above sea level. It is ripe with history dating back to prehistoric times when dinosaurs roamed the region. Prior to 1870 the area was considered neutral territory for the six first nations peoples that used the “hills”.
The Cree, Assiniboine, Gros Ventres, Blood, Peigan and the Blackfoot all hunted the animals and made use of its nearly 700 different plants growing there. The 1870s brought the white settlers as American ranchers began to drive cattle onto the Canadian plains and permanent settlements began for the first time and the ways of the First Nations People changed forever. There were four American whiskey trading posts established in the Cypress Hills. In 1873 the Cypress Hills Massacre took place when a group of American wolf hunters lost some horses and attacked a nearby Assiniboine camp. This event was the catalyst that brought the North West Mounted Police out west. Over the next decade the whiskey trade was eliminated and treaties with First Nations people were negotiated when James Morrow Walsh established Fort Walsh. During the later part of the 1870s Sitting Bull and 3,000 to 5,000 Lakota Sioux took refuge at Wood Mountain after defeating General Custer and the U.S. army in the battle of Little Big Horn. James Walsh and the North West Mounted Police established peace and prevented war. In 1880 two farms were established in the Cypress Hills to demonstrate farming to the natives. Maple Creek was a newly formed community when the Canadian Pacific Railway reached it in 1883. With the railway reaching across the prairie it brought along farmers, ranchers and homesteaders. Shortly thereafter, lumber and mining joined the Cypress Hills and the land was changed forever. 1894 saw a number of forest reserves established in Canada over the concern of the exploitation of natural resources and in 1906 a forest reserve of 18 square miles was created in Cypress Hills under the forest reserve act. In 1911 the forest reserve was expanded to 190 square miles and by 1931 the park grew to over 18,000 hectares. The Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park agreement was signed in 1989 creating Canada’s first interprovincial park. 2006 saw the creation of Cypress Hills Steak Rub and now in 2009 it’s available for the public.
