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Red Coat Trail

Red Coat Trail (Alberta).svg

Red Coat Trail
Red Coat Trail marked in red and the Trans-Canada Highway marked in yellow
Route information
Length: 1,294.3 km (804.2 mi)
Component
highways:
AB 3, AB 4, AB 61, AB 889, AB 501, SK 13, MB 2
Major junctions
West end: Hwy 2 near Fort Macleod, AB
 
East end: PTH 100 near Winnipeg, MB
Location
Major cities: Lethbridge, Winnipeg

Red Coat Trail (Alberta).svg

The Red Coat Trail is a 1,300 km (810 mi) route that approximates the path taken in 1874 by the North-West Mounted Police in their quest to bring law and order to the Canadian West.

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.

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 currently has a population of over 3,000 residentsHead-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 traveling through the Porcupine Hills, the Coyote Flats, and a ghost town named Pearce only marked 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. Beyond the low ridge on the far side of the cut-bank'd Oldman, an enormously rich bed of lacustrine loam began attracting settlers in the early 19-aughts and rewards so well still the agricultural efforts of their descendants....the hills are actually longitudinal dunes of loess picked up from a nearby lakebed..." The highway raises in elevation between the Oldman River and the Belly River watersheds and to the north of the highway is the CP Rail High Level trestle bridge of 1909. Currently the bridge has a well-developed trail system through the river valley and the Helen Schuler Coulee Center and Sir Alexander Galt Museum are located nearby. The Highway 3A alternate route carries traffic across the Oldman River on a 1997 four-lane traffic which re-routed the highway from its old course over the 1957 narrow bridge. This area features a sandstone quarry which was used for construction projects as early as 1904 and a defunct community known as Nevarre changing names to Staunton. Highway 3A continues on to the village of Monarch which is just north of the confluence of the Oldman River and Belly rivers and halfway between Fort Macleod and Lethbridge. North of Monarch on Highway 23 and west of the village, the traffic volume is around 500 AADT, however following the Red Coat Trail into Lethbridge, the volume increases to over 5,000 vpd.


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Wikipedia

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