Grasslands National Park

Welcome, observant travelers, to the vast, sweeping horizons of Grasslands National Park, located in the deep south of Saskatchewan near the Montana border. This is a landscape of profound subtlety and immense ecological…

We begin our exploration within the West Block, driving along the twenty-kilometer Ecotour Scenic Drive that winds through the Frenchman River Valley. The valley itself is a massive glacial spillway, carved thousands of years ago…

A short distance along the Ecotour drive brings us to one of the park's most unique and entertaining ecological features: the Larson Dogtown. Grasslands National Park is the only place in all of Canada where the black-tailed…

We must now address the most magnificent and historically significant inhabitant of the West Block: the plains bison. For centuries, millions of these massive, shaggy ungulates roamed the Great Plains, their migrations serving as…

To truly comprehend the topographical scale of the West Block, we must ascend 70 Mile Butte. The name derives from the era of the North-West Mounted Police; this prominent landmark stood exactly seventy miles from the post at…

As we walk the trails, we must train our eyes to recognize the subtle, ancient architecture hidden within the grass. Grasslands National Park protects one of the largest concentrations of undisturbed pre-contact cultural…

We now drastically shift our geographical focus to the park's remote East Block, approximately a two-hour drive from the West Block. Here, the rolling green and gold prairies violently give way to a stark, deeply eroded, and…

As our expedition to Grasslands National Park concludes, we wait for the sun to set, revealing one of the park's most spectacular and highly protected resources. Grasslands is officially designated as a Dark Sky Preserve. …