Red Coat Trail - Travel Route - Alberta

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 Hwy 2 and the Red Coat Trail, Fort Macleod currently has a population of over 3,000 residents Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a major attraction 20 miles (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 it best, "beneath the Highway's pavement is perhaps 50 metres (160 ft) of glacial till consisting of sand and gravel, clays and boulder clays, humped into hills by the las continental glacier perhaps as it melted away to the northward some 11,000 years ago, overlaying some 10,000 feet (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 agriucltural 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 Hwy 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. AB Hwy 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 Hwy 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. Between Monarch and Coalhurst, the Red Coat Trail is a twinned highway and between Coalhurst, and Lethbridge a multilane divided highway. West of Coalhurst, traffic volume is about 15,000 vpd, and to the east rises to approximately 18,000 vpd. Oil, flax, wheat and sugar beets are the staples of the agricultural economy supplemented by gas and oil in 1974 which replaced the sugar beet harvests. The city of Lethbridge, is locagted at the junction of AB Hwy 4, Hwy 5 and Hwy 3. Travel along the Red Coat Trail corridor leaves Hwy 3 and continues on Hwy 4 south east towards Stirling, with a traffic volume around 5,500 vpd. Whence at Stirling, the Red Coat Trail travel corridor leaves Hwy 4 and now continues east along Hwy 61 towards the small hamlet of Wrentham at the junction of Hwy 36. Between Stirling and Wrentham the traffic volume declines to an AADT of about 550 vpd on a secondary undivided paved highway. The Red Coat Trail runs parallel and north of the Etzikom Coulee and Crow Indian Lake and to the north of the Red Coat Trail are the Chin Lakes and the Chin Reservoir. Coulees are meltwater channels produced by glacier meltoff forming long river valleys. A number of these coulees are dry or almost dry, and some such as the Chin Lakes have been formed by the Chin Reservoir. The weather of southeast Alberta is warmer than the rest of the province, with lower annual precipitation creating a grassland ecoregion. At the junction of the Red Coat Trail and Hwy 877 is the small hamlet of Skiff, population 10, with a declining AADT between 350 to 400 vpd. The village of Foremost is located at the junction with Hwy 879 near 40-mile (64 km) park, and Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park. Etzikom on the intersection of the Red Coat Trail and AB Hwy 855 features the Etzikom Museum and the Canadian National Historical Windmill Center. Orion, a small hamlet with a population of less than 10 residents, is located at the intersection of AB Hwy 887 and the Red Coat Trail. The traffic between Orion and the Saskatchewan border is very low averaging between 70 to 100 vpd. Manyberries is located at the eastern terminus of AB Hwy 61 travel on the Red Coat Trail continues south on Hwy 889 a secondary connector road to meet with Hwy 501, a secondary gravel highway to the Alberta—Saskatchewan border.