People traveling through Saskatchewan on the main routes, usually see the province as flat, boring and a place to get through as quickly as possible. What many people don't realize is that they are traveling through a vast lake bed, cut through by drainage channels and formed as little as 12,000 years ago.

Saskatchewan has an abundance of soil considered to be new and very fertile by many countries whose soil has not been regenerated in many years. During the last Ice Age mixing of soil layers, followed by many years of plant growth on near level land produced the rich tapestry of soils used for farming and ranching.

There have been four icecaps in the last one and a half-million years. Ice caps are formed when all the snow that had fallen during a season is not melted in time for the next. Should this occur for many consecutive years, a compacted snow area grows in size sufficient to create its own weather, thus nurturing and maintaining weather where very heavy snowfalls are common. Snow compacts to ice, when the weight is great enough, the ice deforms and slowly flows.

The first icecap left little evidence of its existence. The second icecap about 650,000 years ago was the largest covering 31% of North America, but with the out wash of melting waters and moraine material, it affected nearly 60% of North America. This icecap centered in Hudson's Bay. It extended as far south as the state of Kansas USA is named "The Kansan." This ice cap which had a depth of about 12,000,000 feet, sheared layers of soil from parts of Quebec, Ontario and Northern Manitoba down to Bedrock. This created the Canadian Shield. The soils were moved ahead of the ice in a very watery, lumpy, slurry known as a moraine that eventually settles, dries and becomes hill country.

On an icecap's recession, there remain huge lakes that last until the waters can find their way either along the frontal edge or under the ice to return to the sea. The third icecap was called the "Illinonian". The Fourth, "The Wisconsin" left its moraine and lakebed almost totally in Saskatchewan, thereby giving a greater diversity of topography than Manitoba or Alberta.

The last ice cap left a moraine escarpment from 60 miles west of the Manitoba border angling northwestward to Swift Current Saskatchewan, then north northwest to Vermillion Alberta and on westward. In most places this moraine escarpment is 400 to 550 or greater feet in height. The southwest side being hill country the northeast side being lakebed, flat with some deep drainage channels. The area of Saskatchewan that this site is based on is located on the eastern end of this hill range, roughly 2,400 square kilometers of land. Equal to the size of the state of Montana.

Understanding the topography of the land is instrumental to the story of the "Traders Trail" which was used to supply trappers and forts. The Northwest mounted police also used this trail in 1874 on their Trek West to bring law and order to conflicts in the new west thereby avoiding traveling through rough hill country near the US border.