Prairie exceptions
Great Central Plains - Wednesday, February 23, 2011
The Great Central Plains of North America is a vast region of land stretching from the Gulf of Mexico to the MacKenzie River. It is one vast tectonic plate with layers of soil layed down like an onion skin peeled back to that just north of us here in the Parkland Region the Canadian Shield with its bedrock sits there with no soil on it at all.
So from Brownsville Texas to Dawson Creek British Columbia, bordered by the cordilleran mountains the run the whole length of both the North and Southern America on the West and the Mississippi Valley as its eastern boundary we consider this flat land. But as with all things there are some remarkable exceptions. Two oddities exist here in Saskatchewan with the Moose Mountains in southeastern Saskatchewan, which is really only a small set of hills but those hills cover an anticline domed summit and on the western border of Saskatchewan and Alberta is the Cypress Hills which also don't quite belong on a broad expansive plain. There is also the Missouri Coteau an escarpment near Avonlea, south of Moose Jaw, that rises above the plain and on its north side the water flows into Hudson Bay and on its South side the water flows through a river system into the Gu;f of Mexico.
In the eons of time the ice cap has expanded and receded a number of times. In each case it altered the landscape depositing gravel and soil, moving rocks around and carving out valleys and rivers. Some parts of the prairies were turned into massive lakes while others were essentially dumping grounds for excavated material. Now with the ice gone we have some places that are just simply not plains at all.
Between Portage la Prairie and Brandon there is an area where glaciation heaped up some gravel and sand hills and even carved out a couple of valleys that do not have streams of any consequence. The little hills with their kettle shaped basins are not particularly fertile and are covered with a mixed forest including both pine and varieties of spruce trees.
When I was returned from Winnipeg on February 10 the sun was shining on that part of the Great Central Plains and I captured some of the scenery on highway # 1 as I was travelling west. Then I turned north at Whitewood passed through the Pipestone Valley then through the Qu' Appelle Valley.
Some how these pictures help to redefine for me the mixture of countryside that can be found on what we call the plains.