The beauty of the vegetation will astound you upon arrival in the deep wooded coulees on the northern edge of the Wood Mountain Plateau.  This Plateau was left behind after the last Glacier melted away.  Why did the huge sheet of ice stop sliding and leave this upper plateau here?  Large sheets of ice broke away and slid eastward through the Big Muddy while another broke loose west of here and slid south through western Montana.  The sheer weight of the ice compacted the soils forming the sandstone that can be located all across southern Saskatchewan.

     Our greatest mystery is the stories that are told here in the petroglyphs carved into the top layer of this sandstone outcropping.  The carvings were cut into the hard ravenscrag sandstone on the upper layer of this exposed rock.  There are many ideas on how they were formed.  Cut, drilled, carved, or rubbed into the surface?  There are very few answers to the mysterious stories they may speak of.  Carvings of animal tracks, human faces, human foot prints, human hands, pictures of man holding or reaching out to a circle and a bear paw along with other designs and shapes of which many are unknown to us today.  The Plains Grizzly Bear is the most prevalent design carved here, giving us the best record of this large bear's life on the plains before the arrival of the Fur Traders.  Pictures of the friendship between man and the animals is shown by the close proximity of the designs of man and the image of hands reaching out to the bear paws.

     With over 300 carvings located on this mysterious site,  there is always something for the visitor to see at different times of the day.  The best time of day to see the Petroglyphs is in the late afternoon and evening or in the early morning.  The Petroglyphs are clearer at this time of day due to the angle of the suns rays creating shadows improving their visibility.

     Special night tours with the aid of flashlights are held during the summer months as designated by the Friends of the Petroglyphs.  These are found listed in the special events listed separately on next page.

     The deep coulee systems spread out before the visitor were cut into the northern slope by the melting water.  Because of the stationery ice cap all the remains of pre glacial mammals are found scattered across the top of the higher plateaus.  The secrets of the upper plateaus are sometimes unveiled with the locating of shattered bones and teeth of Woolly Rhinoceros, Three Toed Horses, Camel, Turtle shell fragments, and the occasional fossil bearing limestone.  Many bison kill sites can be located but most of them have been buried by the slumping action of the hills.