Palliser's Triangle

While initially determined to be unsuitable for crops outside of the fertile belt due to arid conditions and dry climate, expansionists questioned this assessment, leading to homesteading in the Triangle.

Before Western European interests and settlement expanded to the region, Palliser's Triangle was inhabited by a variety of Indigenous peoples, such as the Cree, Sioux, and the Blackfoot Confederacy.

[2] By the mid-1850s, however, the hunt had become an economic venture, their hides and meat sold by Métis and First Nations hunters to the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), and the increased demand led to a decline in herds.

All the above drove the United Kingdom and the Dominion of Canada to organize the Palliser and Hind expeditions, respectively,[4] especially since the 1840s discovery that latitude alone did not determine climate, which in turn suggested that good farmland may exist in the region.

Macoun, on the other hand, found the region in a major wet period after a severe decline in animal life in no small part due to the overhunting of bison.

With Macoun's assessment in hand, the Canadian government undertook an advertising campaign to encourage European immigration to western Canada,[9] which was joined by the distribution of 160-acre tracts of farmland for a token fee of ten dollars under the federal Dominion Lands Act.

[10] In addition, the planned Canadian Pacific Railway was moved southwards from its original route through the Parklands to instead pass through Palliser's Triangle for the sake of facilitating homesteading and grain shipment, thus further encouraging settlement in the region.

[9] Many farmers who did settle in the semi-arid portion of the Triangle between the period of the expedition and 1914 saw success, especially as the demand for wheat was driven up by the outbreak of the First World War, though many others were forced to partake in wage labour as hired farmhands, members of itinerant threshing crews, or manual labour for road and rail construction companies, logging camps and mining towns, to continue sustaining their farms.

This was caused, in large part, by a decrease in precipitation as well as longstanding flawed farming practices that exacerbated aeolian soil erosion and dust storm activity.

This includes the practice of leaving fields fallow, seen as necessary at the time to support agriculture in the given climate, as it was believed that exposed soil would better absorb and retain moisture.