National Historic Site of Canada
National Historic Sites of Canada (french: Lieux historiques nationaux du Canada) are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment
An environment minister (sometimes minister of the environment or secretary of t ...
that was a
North-West Mounted Police
The North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) was a Canadian para-military police force, established in 1873, to maintain order in the new Canadian North-West Territories (NWT) following the 1870 transfer of Rupert’s Land and North-Western Territory ...
Parks Canada
Parks Canada (PC; french: Parcs Canada),Parks Canada is the applied title under the Federal Identity Program; the legal title is Parks Canada Agency (). is the agency of the Government of Canada which manages the country's 48 National Parks, th ...
, it forms a constituent part of
Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park
Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park is a natural park in Canada straddling the Alberta / Saskatchewan boundary and jointly administered by the two provinces. Located south-east of Medicine Hat, it became Canada's first interprovincial park in ...
.
The fort was built in June 1875 and was named for its builder, inspector
James Morrow Walsh
James Morrow Walsh (22 May 1840 – 25 July 1905) was a North-West Mounted Police (NWMP) officer and the first commissioner of Yukon.
Born in Prescott, Ontario, James Walsh was one of the original officers of the NWMP. Superintendent Walsh w ...
. The fort was intended to curb the illegal whiskey trade, protect Canada's nearby border with the United States, and aid with native policy. These factors had been brought to public attention following the Cypress Hills Massacre of 1873 and resulted in Prime Minister
John A. Macdonald
Sir John Alexander Macdonald (January 10 or 11, 1815 – June 6, 1891) was the first prime minister of Canada, serving from 1867 to 1873 and from 1878 to 1891. The dominant figure of Canadian Confederation, he had a political career that sp ...
's establishment of the NWMP.
Assiniboine chiefs Man Who Takes the Coat, Long Lodge, and Lean Man signed adhesion to Treaty 4 at the fort on September 25, 1877.
Fort Walsh served as the NWMP headquarters from 1878 to 1882. In 1883 the fort was closed and dismantled.
The site of the fort was designated a
National Historic Site of Canada
National Historic Sites of Canada (french: Lieux historiques nationaux du Canada) are places that have been designated by the federal Minister of the Environment
An environment minister (sometimes minister of the environment or secretary of t ...
in 1924. The fort was later reconstructed in the 1940s to breed horses for the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; french: Gendarmerie royale du Canada; french: GRC, label=none), commonly known in English as the Mounties (and colloquially in French as ) is the federal police, federal and national police service of ...
and the Musical Ride.
Tourists can tour the fort's buildings, the former townsite, cemeteries, and the whiskey trading post.
On September 28, 2004, Fort Walsh became part of the Cypress Hills
dark-sky preserve
A dark-sky preserve (DSP) is an area, usually surrounding a park or observatory, that restricts artificial light pollution. The purpose of the dark-sky movement is generally to promote astronomy. However, astronomy is certainly not the only obje ...
.
On June 28, 1985, Canada Post issued "Fort Walsh, Sask., circa 1880", one of the 20 stamps in the "Forts Across Canada" series (1983–1985). The stamps are perforated × 13 mm and were printed by Ashton-Potter Limited based on the designs by
Rolf P. Harder Rolf is a male given name and a surname. It originates in the Germanic languages, Germanic name ''Hrolf'', itself a contraction of ''Hrodwulf'' (Rudolph (name), Rudolf), a conjunction of the stem words ''hrod'' ("renown") + ''wulf'' ("wolf"). The O ...