Palliser's Triangle

Extensive area in the Prairie Provinces of Canada, near the US border. Named after the head of a British expedition that explored and surveyed it for possible settlement in 1857-60, the Triangle is an area of shortgrass prairie, with sandhills and other barren tracts, and little rainfall. The base of the triangle runs roughly southeast over a distance of some 1,130 km/700 mi, extending from near Calgary across southeastern Alberta, southern Saskatchewan, and into southwestern Manitoba; its apex is near Lloydminster, on the Alberta-Saskatchewan border. Cities here include Medicine Hat and Lethbridge, in Alberta, and Moose Jaw and Regina, in Saskatchewan.

Despite Palliser's conclusion that the area was unsuitable for agriculture, homesteading began in 1908, sparking a land rush. After a few years of abnormally good harvests during World War I, a drought began, which quickly depopulated the so-called ‘Prairie Dry Belt’, in southeastern Alberta and southwestern Saskatchewan. The more widespread drought of the 1930s, which created the US ‘dust bowl’, also affected this region, and resettlement only occurred when advances had been made in irrigation and farming technology.