- 50¡ 39.229, W 107¡ 29.584 may be the easiest way to find this prairie
treasure on the northern edge of the Missouri Coteau.
Sandcastles and Sunken Hill are unique sand and clay formations caused
by wind, water and subterranean collapse. The area is on the northern
banks
of the South Saskatchewan River where Lake
Diefenbaker begins to swell to its average width.
White settlers first recorded the existence of the unique lowlands of
the river valley south and east of Beechy, Sask.
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The sandstone castles stand up to 30 metres tall and give a surreal
appearance to the area surrounding this turn in the river called
Bearpaw Bend.
Sunken Hill, a giant coulee 30 m deep, appeared one day in 1949. Only a
day or two before the plateau collapsed, John Minor Sr. and his wife
drove their car across the area to check their cattle. A rider on
horseback three days later was checking the herd and discovered the
tracks of the car heading off a cliff and then appearing on the valley
floor and again on the other side of the new ravine.
The cause may have been a pocket of natural gas, quicksand or an
underground water body.
Overlooking the valley from the plateaus of prairie 100 m above the
river, a visitor can watch cattle from the Perrin family’s Sandcastle
Ranch and the Matador community pasture. The latter was part of the
once-gigantic Matador Ranch that stretched from Texas to Saskatchewan.
The Matador Land and Cattle Co. was established at the Matador Ranch in
Texas, northeast of Lubbock, in 1879. From 1904 to 1922, the Scottish-
based company drove 6,000 head of cattle each spring from Texas to
grazing lands just north of the South Saskatchewan River prior to
shipping them to market in Chicago. The 150,000 acre ranch was leased
from the federal government at two cents
per acre per year.
Bill Barry, author of People Places The Saskatchewan Dictionary of
Place Names, said it is not “readily apparent why the company abandoned
the project in 1922. It was nicknamed the world’s largest feedlot”.
The company shipped most of its cattle from and to Waldeck prior to the
First World War, and from Wiseton thereafter.
Afterward, the provincial government picked up its lease, converting
the land to Western Canada’s first provincial community pasture.
