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Dennis Begin
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Courtney Milne
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Courtney Milne
By Dennis Begin, photos by Courtney Milne & Dennis Begin
In southwestern Saskatchewan, the Cypress Hills, at 1468 m (4,816 ft) in elevation, rise above the flat prairie landscape as if an anomaly. The hills form an Interprovincial Park on the border of Alberta and Saskatchewan. Within the park is Fort Walsh, a former North West Mounted Police (NWMP) fort, now designated as a National Historic Site.
Just outside the Cypress Hills is an odd collection of rocks that the locals call The Rock Pile or the Mystery Rocks. After spending a day visiting Fort Walsh, my next goal was to find the mysterious pile of rocks, something my father had spoken about decades before and that has always been in my mind. By hiking east from Abe Farwell’s Trading Post, the site of the Cypress Hills Massacre of 1873, I found the rock pile near the top of a hill overlooking a coulee. My first impression, other than being bewildered, was that the layout of the rocks appeared as if a wall had fallen forward.
The rock outcroppings are aligned in a northwest to southeast line. There are approximately eleven rows with sixty-five large rocks. There are also large rocks scattered around the site. These massive rocks are largely rectangular, two to seven and a half metres (6 to 25 ft) in length and one and a half to three metres (5 to 9 ft) in depth. The theory that these huge rocks were left behind during a period of glaciation, is easy to accept, but what you see next seems to defy this thought.
On first appearance, it appears that someone chiseled out the rocks in a relatively straight line, end to end, with the rocks fitting together like a puzzle. Natural forces, however, do not cut straight lines. On top of the larger rocks are approximately fifteen carved basins that are four to eight inches in depth. The basins reminded me of a grinding bowl that the First Nations would have used to make flour from corn. Walking around the rocks, there is some evidence of pictographs and former fires, but due to the lack of water and tepee rings, this was not a major village. The pile of rocks and their composition do not match the smaller rocks of the surrounding prairie landscape. The Rock Pile is considered to be pre-history, dated well before the arrival of the local Assiniboine First Nations, who treat this site as an enigma, or an area to avoid. Archaeologists seem to dismiss the rocks as an unusual geological formation and not worth the time and money to investigate further. The formation of the rocks could be an astrological site, similar to the better-known medicine wheels.
The best photos can be found by Googling, courtneymilne/mystery rocks and ryanwunsch/mystery rocks. Both men are well-known photographers in Saskatchewan, with Ryan using a drone to give an aerial view of the rocks.
Questions Remain
Many questions remain. Who carved the rocks and how? What was their original purpose? Could the rocks compose an astrological or mythological site? Did shamans use this site as part of a spiritual quest? What was the purpose of the basins? Why did someone not finish cutting the rocks? There appears to be no answers to any of these questions. Even though I left with a little sadness, I felt the spirit of my father walking beside me and I was okay with the not solving the mystery.
Since the Rock Pile is located on private land, check with the Ranger at Fort Walsh on how to obtain permission to visit this remarkable place. We’ve been asked not to publish its exact location as it is on private land.