Castles on the Prairies

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Published: June 6, 2002

  • 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.

About the author

Michael Raine

Managing Editor, Saskatoon newsroom

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