Thousands of carvings on the Milk River cliffs, and a UNESCO listing in 2019
The Milk River cut a valley of hoodoos and sandstone cliffs here, and people have been carving and painting on those cliffs for a very long time: more than 50 petroglyph sites and thousands of individual works, one of the largest concentrations of rock art on the North American plains. The Blackfoot name, Aísínai’pi, means it is pictured, and the Blackfoot made much of it. UNESCO listed the park on 6 July 2019. Here is the part that stops people in their tracks: THE ART RECORDS A CHANGE. From around 1730 the figures shift, and hunters on horseback and warriors carrying no body shield start appearing on the rock. That is the arrival of the horse on these plains and the end of shield-and-spear fighting, written down at the time by the people it was happening to. There is a North-West Mounted Police outpost here too, established in 1887 against whisky smuggling and horse raiding, of which the official verdict is that neither problem ever became serious at this post; it was closed in 1918 and then burned down by persons unknown, so what stands is a reconstruction. People have been in this valley for as long as 9,000 years. It has been an archaeological preserve since 1977: most of the park is open to walk, and the most sensitive ground is guided tours only, which is the part worth booking ahead for.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
