Indian Battle Park, Lethbridge

Today, we went down to Indian Battle Park, on the western edge of Lethbridge. It was on this site that the Blackfoot and Cree Indians engaged in the  Battle of Belly River on October 24,  1870.

I have always wanted to go to this park and take pictures of the High Level Bridge.  I finally got my wish.

This bridge is an amazing structure.  It is the largest railway bridge in Canada; I certainly think it is the tallest.  It is situated in an absolutely gorgeous setting — the coulees.  Here, at one time, coal was mined.  There was a community known as Coalbanks, and it was here that the famous Galt coal was mined.  Initially, the coal was hauled out of the ground by horses.  Then an incline railway was built to haul the coal to the top of the coulees where it was transported first by bull-train, then finally by locomotive.  Attempts were made to ship it by the Oldman River, but the fluctuating levels of the river made that impractical and impossible.

The entire place became a historical site sometime in the 60’s.  The mines are long closed and the park is part of an extensive trail system that takes walkers, bikers and hikers from side of Lethbridge to the other.  The park is also home to a grove of heritage trees — Plains Cottonwoods — amazing, rough-barked trees with numerous twisted branches that sweep upwards to the clouds and twine down towards the ground.  They are beautiful old trees.  I’m glad I got to sit beneath their canopy today.

So, here are some of the pictures I took today.  Hope you enjoy them.

Tim and I with the bridge in the background. It was incredibly windy up where we were — can’t imagine how windy it would be on top of the bridge.

A shot of the complex trestle-work of the bridge.

Tim reliving his childhood. He was about a third of the way up one of the trestles. He says they used to climb all the way up to the tracks and then have to scramble underneath and hang on for dear life when a train was passing. Makes me shiver just thinking about it!

One of the signs at the interpretive center for the Coalbanks site.

A piece of coal machinery used inside the mines.

An old coal-car.

The trestles from underneath.

Tim took this one — looking up to the bridge from underneath it.

The lookout point from which I took the pictures of the bridge and the park. That’s a lot of steps!

Rivets in the bridge supports.

One of the heritage Plains Cottonwood trees.

Heritage tree.

The Oldman River with the High Level Bridge in the distance.

On the banks of the Oldman.

Unknown wildflower.

A piece of old, weathered tree.

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