Red Coat Trail

The Red Coat Trail is a 1,300-kilometre (810 mi) route in Canada that approximates the path taken in 1874 by the North-West Mounted Police in their March West from Fort Dufferin to Fort Whoop-Up.

Route description

A number of highways in southern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta roughly follow the original route.

In Alberta, the trail follows Highways 3, 4, 61, 889, and 501.

In Saskatchewan, Highway 13 is designated as Red Coat Trail. The travel corridor from the Manitoba–Saskatchewan border to Winnipeg follows Manitoba PTH 2.

Alberta

Near Fort Macleod, the traffic volume is between 4,200 and 7,900 vehicles per day (vpd) according to the 2007 Average Annual Daily Traffic report, which is quite consistent for the decade. The area is a short-grass prairie ecosystem with black soils and is conducive to grain growing. Located at the junction of Highway 2 and the Red Coat Trail, Fort Macleod as of 2021 has a population of over 3,000 residents Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a major attraction 20 mi (32 km) northwest of town. Between Fort Macleod, and Lethbridge, the Red Coat Trail runs concurrent with the Crowsnest Highway travelling through the Porcupine Hills, the Coyote Flats, and a ghost town named Pearce marked only by a railway crossing and a few farms. D.M. Wilson says, "beneath the Highway's pavement is perhaps 50 m (160 ft) of glacial till consisting of sand and gravel, clays, and boulder clays, humped into hills by the last continental glacier perhaps as it melted away to the northward some 11,000 years ago, overlaying some 10,000 ft (3,000 m) of sedimentary Púleozoic and Mesozoic strata which themselves rest on Precambrian granites.