[5] Located at the junction of Highway 2 and the Red Coat Trail, Fort Macleod currently has a population of over 3,000 residents[6] Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump is a major attraction 20 mi (32 km) northwest of town.

[7] Between Fort Macleod, and Lethbridge, the Red Coat Trail runs concurrent with the Crowsnest Highway travelling through the Porcupine Hills, the Coyote Flats, and a ghost town named Pearce only marked by a railway crossing and a few farms.

Wilson says, "beneath the Highway's pavement is perhaps 50 m (160 ft) of glacial till consisting of sand and gravel, clays, and boulder clays, humped into hills by the last continental glacier perhaps as it melted away to the northward some 11,000 years ago, overlaying some 10,000 ft (3,000 m) of sedimentary Púleozoic and Mesozoic strata which themselves rest on Precambrian granites.

Beyond the low ridge on the far side of the cut-bank'd Oldman, an enormously rich bed of lacustrine loam began attracting settlers in the early 19-aughts and rewards so well still the agricultural efforts of their descendants....the hills are actually longitudinal dunes of loess picked up from a nearby lakebed..."[8] The highway raises in elevation between the Oldman River and the Belly River watersheds and to the north of the highway is the CP Rail High Level trestle bridge of 1909.

[8] Currently the bridge has a well-developed trail system through the river valley and the Helen Schuler Coulee Centre and Sir Alexander Galt Museum are located nearby.

This area features a sandstone quarry which was used for construction projects as early as 1904 and a defunct community known as Nevarre changing names to Staunton.

The weather of southeast Alberta is warmer than the rest of the province, with lower annual precipitation creating a grassland ecoregion.

[11] At the junction of the Red Coat Trail and Highway 877 is the small hamlet of Skiff, population 10, with a declining AADT between 350 and 400 vpd.

[15][16][17] SK Hwy 615 provides access north to Fort Walsh National Historic Park and the highest point of land in Saskatchewan.

Travel is mainly east through the province of Saskatchewan on the Red Coat Trail which is continuous on SK Hwy 13 which is a secondary paved undivided highway until Weyburn.

[16][17] Travel continues north east until the junction with SK Hwy 21 which provides access to Cypress Hills Provincial Park and Maple Creek.

The Red Coat Trail continues east after this intersection on a class 3 granular pavement highway and traffic here increases to an AADT of 270 vpd.

SK Hwy 37 provides access to the town of Gull Lake and in 9.4 km (5.8 mi), the Red Coat Trail turns east on a thin membrane surface class 2 highway bearing between 150 and 250 vpd.

[15][16][17] The Red Coat Trail is upgraded to a class 5 granular pavement as traffic can reach a high of 530 vpd east of this SK Hwy 4 intersection.

There are also 33 at grade intersections with numbered provincial highways and roads on this 349.2 km (217.0 mi) portion of the Red Coat Trail in Manitoba.

[35][36] The actual route taken by the North-West Mounted Police in 1874 was some hundred kilometres south of the "Red Coat Trail", designated by the tourism industry.

The grasslands area of today was still forested in the 19th century and land would need to be cleared and broken for agricultural homesteads and roads.

The Territorial Department of Public Works decided upon a steel bridge set upon concrete piers and received a $50,000 grant for construction from the Dominion Government.

[8] Red shale can still be seen of the Taylor coal mine (1916–1925) constructed in the upper river bank north of the Lethbridge traffic bridge.

This era was followed by four-horse teams pulling a sulky plough across the roads, eliminating ruts and forming a hard and level surface to drive upon.

[41] During the 1940s Pearce, Alberta, was home to a CPR station, village, and the British Commonwealth Air Training Program featuring the No.

[41] In 1952, a general standard was established wherein the provincial government paid 60% and the rural municipalities the remainder for road planning and improvements.

[41] MB Hwy 2 was constructed to the modern highway able to carry high-speed vehicles, and steel culverts have replaced the early wooded bridges.

[49][50] During the 1970s, the SK Hwy 13 was extended between Eastend and the Alberta border as part of the Red River Trail corridor.

[52] The Red Coat Trail travels across the Oldman River near Monarch Alberta on a pre-stressed four-lane concrete bridge which was completed in 1997.

The transformation of this highway between the Manitoba border and Cadillac, SK from a thin membrane surface (TMS) to a paved standard is nearing completion.

[6] Healy and Hamilton built Fort Whoop Up 8 mi (13 km) from the current location of Lethbridge near the confluence of the St. Mary and Belly Rivers.

Colonel Macleod of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police (RNWMP) presented Healy and Hamilton with an offer to purchase Fort Whoop Up which they declined.

[39] Grasslands National Park near Ponteix, Sk features NWMP trail markers amidst the Killdeer Badlands.

In 1887, the detachment moved to the banks of the White Mud River the current location of Eastend, Sk as many of their concernts were alleviated, the whisky trade had ceased, the North-West Rebellion of 1885 was over, and Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa Lakota Sioux holy man surrendered to American forces and returned to the United States in 1881.