Fort Pitt Provincial Park

Frenchman Butte No. 501, CA

Fort Pitt Provincial Park is a provincial park in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. It includes the site of Fort Pitt, a trading post built in 1829 by the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) on the North Saskatchewan River in Rupert's Land. It was built at the direction of Chief Factor John Rowand, prev

iously of Fort Edmonton, to trade goods for bison hides, meat and pemmican. Pemmican, dried buffalo meat, was required as provisions for HBC's northern trading posts. In the 1870s the buffalo in the Fort Pitt area had been severely diminished through the overhunting necessary to meet the high demand from the HBC for pemmican. One academic journal states "with the disappearance of the buffalo, pork had replaced pemmican altogether", showing the drastic effects on the HBC of the depletion of the local buffalo population. Fort Pitt was built where the territories of the Cree, Assiniboine, and Blackfoot converged. It was located on a large bend in the river just east of the present day Alberta–Saskatchewan border and was the major post between Fort Edmonton and Fort Carlton. In 1876, it was one of the locations for signing Treaty 6. It was the scene of the Battle of Fort Pitt during the North...

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