In the 1860s and 1870s, as many as sixty Métis families occupied this coulee on a seasonal basis — a community known as Hunter’s Settlement. They built homes with stone chimneys, and the ruins of those chimneys are what gave the site its name after the settlement was abandoned around 1880 with the disappearance of the bison.
The site also held a Hudson’s Bay Company post in the early 1870s, though it lasted only one season due to hostilities between the Assiniboine and Blackfoot peoples and competition from whiskey traders. Chimney Coulee is a Provincial Historic Site and a Municipal Heritage Property.
It’s located about 6 kilometres north of Eastend, on the east slope of the Cypress Hills. A quiet, powerful place that holds layers of prairie history in its landscape.
Photo: Google Maps, Marcus Dyck
