![]() Because it lies in the rain-shadow of the Selkirks and the Purcells, it is usually dry and always very pretty, but campers will hardly be trampled by hordes of antelope. In what might be a sentimental reference to the escape from Cranbrook of eleven circus elephants in 1926, or merely a crass attempt to attract tourists by comparing the Rocky Mountain Trench to the African Rift Valley, some locals promote this region as the Serengeti of the North. Thats a stretch. But to see the valleys exoticsgrizzlies, bighorn sheep, mountain goats, catamounts and wolvesone must hike up into the highlands away from civilization. Looking closely, travellers rolling slowly along might just see a deer or two in the shadows, or a foxy coyote nosing the ground for a clue to a meal. Nearby, a borrow pit reveals what underlies the thin soil of the trench: uncountable tonnes of smooth-stoned gravel ranging in size from peas to bounders the size of your head. Guarding the chain-link fenced compound of the huge BC Hydro switching station, a scattering of ground squirrels stand at attention on their mounds amid the stiff stalks of yellow-flowered sow thistle and whistle the all-clear as intruders pass out of their territory. Southern railbed, ploughing across tiny prairies and rolling open slopes of saffron grass where skinny Lodgepoles huddle with an occasional ponderosa pine in dusty open-grown clumps awaiting the next assault by wildfire. Often in sight on the right is the old B.C. ![]() On the left a sight so familiar to southern Albertans: central-pivot irrigation systems green ¼ square-mile circles of hay. Whether or not Eager Hill is the alignment of the original 1909 auto-route twixt Cranbrook and The Fort is a matter of conjecture.Īway from the Interchange, its spring-time ditches full of yellow-eyed daisies white and purple and chains of blue bells dancing in the bow-wash of semi-trailer trucks and Winnebagos, the Highway keeps to the terrace on the Kootenays right bank as it carries travellers south-eastward. 95 which bumps its way down into the Kootenays valley through a patchy forest of gray-trunked Lodgepole pines and scrubby cottonwood until it finally rejoins the 93/95 just above the sign to the Original Fort Steele Campground. Particularly suited to bicycles, this road is a partially paved remnant of old No. 3 a few dozen metres toward Wardner and turning left onto the poorly marked Eager Hill - Fort Steele Road on the down-slope side of the Highway. The alternative, scenic route, however, is found by following No. ![]() Historically-minded travellers wont think twice before straying the eight kilometres from the Crowsnest Highway to visit the Fort.įrom the interchange one could just glide down the 93/95 into the Valley bottom and up to Fort Steele. Here it is unravelled by a Los Angelesque high speed interchange built in 1972 to shoot the 93/95 north-east across the Kootenay River past Fort Steele, and bend the Crowsnest Highway, now numbered 3/93, south-easterly down the Rivers valley. Some six kilometres beyond the Overpass, the Highway comes to the lip of the Kootenay Rivers valley. This alignment was Colonel Bakers triumph it cut off Fort Steele and carried the Railway to Cranbrook, making Baker rich enough so that he could abandon the colonies and comfortably retire home to England within two years of the Railways completion in the autumn of 1898. Abandoned by the Railway in 1970, it is now part of the Trans-Canada Trail, making its way through picturesque Isadore Canyon as it arrows its way south south-east down the last few metres of the old, scarred face of the Purcells to meet the Kootenay at Wardner. The Wardner-Fort Steele (Bull River) Road alternativeĪway eastbound from the northern limits of Cranbrook, the Crowsnest Highway is accompanied by the original railbed of the B.C. Jim Graham and Jean (Graham) Wood, and the Sand Creek Historical Book Committee. Eagle, Constance and Christopher Graf, Adolf Hungry Wolf, Ian McKenzie, Joyce and Peter McCart, Naomi Miller and the East Kootenay Historical Society, Nicole Tremblay, Rosemary Neering, Derryll White, Martin Ross, Wm. With thanks to Don Bain, Stan Baric, the BC Hydro Pioneers, C.W.
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