The Red Coat Trail

Author: Joan Thompson

As the visitors had managed to hide their getaway car under a haystack at the edge of town undetected, no one suspected they might be bank robbers. They mingled with the townspeople going about their Saturday errands, stopping to chat with shopkeepers and passersby. But couched between a visit to the barber and a chin-wag with the mayor, the three men had stolen a heavy hammer and crowbar from the CPR workyard, cut all of the town’s telegraph and telephone wires, and disabled any car parked near the bank.

In the early hours of the next day, they had a flashlight—and revolver—trained on the two guards at the town bank, the safe blown open, and tens of thousands of dollars in cash, and were bound for their getaway car.

They reached the Montana border within moments of leaving Foremost, Alberta, a town on the western edge of what would become known as the Red Coat Trail.

The Wild West lived up to its name in the Canadian prairies at the turn of the last century, when deeded land and adventure lured immigrants, drifters, and dreamers to the promise of big sky country.

Rife with stories of gambling, rum-running, and cattle rustling, the government of Canada, in 1874, decided it was time to rein in the goings-on and sent a battalion of 200 “Red Coats” (the North-West Mounted Police) into the badlands to lay down the law.

From Winnipeg, the newly recruited Mounties marched 1,300 kilometres across southern Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Alberta as far as Fort MacLeod to establish a chain of constabulary posts that might help referee relationships between Indigenous peoples, government-sponsored settlers, and the all-too-active outlaw gangs.

The police force’s calming presence on the newly established Red Coat Trail was quickly apparent. The infamous bandits Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, upon entering Canada via the Outlaw Trail, were directed to a ranch near Fort MacLeod that was in need of fresh cowhands. It wasn’t long before their cowboy skills outpaced their bank-robbing ones, allowing them to blend seamlessly into Canadian prairie life.

Sitting Bull, after the defeat of General Custer at Little Bighorn, was given asylum in Wood Mountain, where he and his Sioux followers, having agreed to respect Canadian law, lived peacefully and undisturbed between 1877 and 1881.

Another legend tells of a lone Red Coat—Daniel Peach—who offered to resolve territorial disputes between the Assiniboine and the Blackfoot by leading 300 Assiniboine 250 kilometres north to unstaked hunting grounds.

With the addition of another transportation artery in 1915—the southern spur of the Canadian Pacific Railway—the Red Coats were faced with further challenges.

With road and trail transport now available to support ranchers and wheat growers, industry close to these lifelines boomed across the prairies. Settlements became full-fledged thriving towns, complete with hotels, saloons, banks, dental and medical clinics, beauty parlours, post offices, churches, and schools.

During American Prohibition (1920–1932), saloons, gambling halls, and liquor outlets assumed an outsized role in local commerce—if only to satisfy American customers’ thirst for 12 per cent Canadian beer!

One town, Scotsguard, was dubbed “Little Chicago” due to its notoriety as a sin bin, with bootleggers and card sharks flooding the town every weekend for dusk-to-dawn poker games—not to mention professional gangs of cross-border bank robbers.

With the onset of the Great Depression in the late 1920s, the high-living glory days of these boom towns were short-lived. On the prairies, the economic downturn was exacerbated by droughts, dust storms, typhoid outbreaks, unemployment, and towns’ vulnerability to fire, forcing bankrupt homesteaders to flee to larger cities.

Those clinging to the last remnants of small prairie towns inevitably surrendered to the unstoppable tides of change.

Today, those poignant memories and whispers of history envelop visitors journeying along the Red Coat Trail.

Opportunities to comb through the relics of time await at every turn: a shuttered schoolhouse nestled in a field of Russian thistle; a single white church spire, stark against the prairie sky; an abandoned hardware store with pieces of the town’s boardwalk still nudged against its stoop.

And when you think all has been lost to time, you will stumble upon places that, through restorative magic (some would say madness), defy the label of ghost town.

One of those places is Etzikom, Alberta. Once the epicentre of windmill technology critical to harnessing the Chinook winds, it is now home to the Etzikom Museum and Canadian National Historic Windpower Interpretive Centre. In addition to hundreds of antique windmills and watermills on display, a cluster of the town’s original buildings has also been lovingly restored.

Another town that has found new life is Scotsguard. Keith Hagan, a proud descendant of a family that resided in Scotsguard during its glory days as “Little Chicago,” has bought and restored most of the town’s remaining pioneer buildings: the old United Church, the fire hall and jail, and the curling rink.

Even the original street signs have been rescued and are once more directing traffic through town. When you see the sign, “Speed Limit 20 miles per hour by Police Order,” you will be reminded of the missionary zeal of the first battalion of Red Coats sent to keep the peace in the West—and be grateful for their enduring legacy along the trail today.

Travelling west from BC in your vehicle, the most straightforward access to the Red Coat Trail is via Highway 4 just south of Lethbridge. The eastern exit (or entrance, if travelling west) is via Highway 2, which approaches and leaves Winnipeg from the southwest.

When you tire of photographing tumbleweed-tossed streets, stop at the numerous museums along the route. Among them is the T-Rex Discovery Centre in Eastend, which features the six-million-year-old “Scottie,” described as the world’s largest T. rex, and the Rusty Relics Museum in Carlyle, which showcases prairie rail history. The Etzikom Museum and Canadian National Historic Windpower Interpretive Centre is another highlight. Though there are a few larger, very much alive centres along the trail, much of the route is unserviced, so prepare and pack accordingly. Municipal campgrounds, however, are plentiful, often situated in the centre of even the smallest towns. Take advantage of these lovingly maintained green spaces—quiet, clean, economical, and usually adjacent to an interesting historic feature along the Red Coat Trail.

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