Southern Saskatchewan is a region in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It covers a vast swath of prairie, south of Lake Diefenbaker and the Qu'Appelle River to the U.S. border.

Communities

Southeastern Saskatchewan

Downtown Regina

• 1 Regina — the provincial capital offers museums, art galleries, a professional football team, and more parks and greenspace per capita than any major city in Canada
• 2 Carlyle — site of an attempt by eastern settlers to recreate the aristocratic English lifestyle supported by agriculture
• 3 Fort Qu'Appelle — founded in 1865 as a Hudson's Bay Company trading post, it has a museum on the original site
• 4 Estevan — the sunniest city in Canada
• 5 Moosomin — eastern gateway to Saskatchewan along the Trans-Canada Highway
• 6 Qu'Appelle Valley — includes Lumsden, Craven and Regina Beach
• 7 Weyburn — see the world's first curling museum (curling is a sport played on ice that is popular in rural Canada)
• 8 Whitewood — "Crossroads Community", located at the intersection of Highways 1 and 9

Southwestern Saskatchewan

• 9 Assiniboia — jumping off point to the Big Muddy Badlands
• 10 Maple Creek — the gateway to Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park
• 11 Moose Jaw — take a tour through the extensive underground tunnels that were used by bootleggers in the 1920s and by early Chinese immigrants
• 12 Swift Current — home to a Mennonite heritage village

Other destinations

Grassland national park

• 1 Big Muddy Badlands — a dry prairie terrain with rocky outcroppings
• 2 Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park — a park straddling the Alberta-Saskatchewan border that has Canada's highest point between the Canadian Rockies and the Labrador peninsula
• 3 Grasslands National Park — protecting one of Canada's few remaining areas of undisturbed dry mixed-grass/shortgrass prairie grassland
• 4 Great Sandhills — a sparsely-populated rural region
• 5 Lake Diefenbaker and surrounding regions — 800 km of shoreline, three provincial parks and various regional parks for fishing, boating and camping
• 6 Moose Mountain Provincial Park — year-round activities, beautiful stands of popular and birch trees, and hilly topography

Understand

Great Sand Hills

The southwest part of the region has some unique spots that are not typical of a prairie landscape. Straddling the border between Saskatchewan and Alberta, the Cypress Hills Inter-Provincial Park rises 600 m above the surrounding prairie and is home to a sub-alpine lodgepole pine forest. South of Leader, the Great Sand Hills Ecological Reserve is approximately 1,900 km² of ever-changing sand dunes. With 800 km of shoreline Lake Diefenbaker on the South Saskatchewan river is southern Saskatchewan's "Great Lake". The Big Muddy and Killdeer Badlands are very rugged hills and valleys carved by meltwater at the end of the last ice age.

Southwest Saskatchewan is the heart of Canada's own "Old Wild West".

The major industries are ranching and farming although the petroleum industry is growing in the western part of the region.

Get in

The Trans-Canada Highway (Highway #1) runs across the region (including Regina and Moose Jaw), connecting Southern Saskatchewan to Alberta and Manitoba. Saskatchewan Highway 11 connects Regina to Saskatoon in Central Saskatchewan.

If travelling by plane, most people will arrive at Regina International Airport in Regina, which is served by Air Canada and WestJet from various cities across Canada, plus Phoenix, Las Vegas and Orlando.

There are several ports of entry from Montana, USA. The Empire Builder train runs about 100 km south of the US-Canada border.

Get around

Rider Express provides bus service between Moose Jaw, Swift Current and Regina.

See

Wood Mountain Post Provincial Historic Park, 8 km S of the village of Wood Mountain on Hwy 18 ☏ +1-800-205-7070, tells the history of a North West Mounted Police (NWMP) post founded in 1874 to patrol the Canada/United States border and police whiskey traders, horse thieves and cattle rustlers. The post rose to prominence in 1876, when Chief Sitting Bull and 5,000 members of the Sioux (Lakota) First Nation took refuge in Canada after the Battle of Little Bighorn. Wood Mountain Post Provincial Park features two reconstructed buildings that tell the story of Major James Walsh of the NWMP and his negotiations with Chief Sitting Bull. Interpretive staff are on hand from June to September and school programming is available. There are picnic facilities on site and camping is available at nearby Wood Mountain Regional Park.

You can explore more of the province's history in Regina at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, the history of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police at the RCMP Heritage Centre in Regina, the history of the Hudson's Bay Company at Fort Qu'Appelle, and Prohibition Era rum-running in Moose Jaw's underground tunnels.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Sunset Ceremony

For fans of horses and/or uniformed police officers, the RCMP Sunset Retreat Ceremonies is a colourful 45-minute ceremony for the lowering of the Canadian flag. (Jul-Aug only).

Rouleau, a small town about 45 minutes south of Regina, was used as the filming location for the popular TV sitcom Corner Gas from 2004-2009. (The studio where the rest of the series was filmed is in Regina.)

Do

Explore the prairie and Badlands terrain in the region's national and provincial parks.

Fishing, boating and camping on Lake Diefenbaker.

The Queen City Ex in Regina is the biggest summer fair in the province, with free stages, food, midway, exhibits, Buffalo Days parade, home decor, pancake breakfast, Equifest, downtown activities. (Late July-early August.)