Pre-European First Nations

This remains a sacred place to the Blackfoot First Nation. Abundant petroglyphs, covering sheer sandstone cliffs, native grasses, and wildlife are are protected as a living part of the Blackfoot natural spiritual heritage.

The Milk River flows through sandstone hoodoos and coulees carved by wind and rain since the last Ice Age. Hoodoos are columns of sandstone protected by top layers of resistant rock. While the sandstone is eroded by wind and rain, the hard cap protects the formation from water infiltration and collapse.

This park is a sacred landscape that has special spiritual significance for the Blackfoot people who hunted & travelled the Great Plains for generations. The traditional culture of the Blackfoot is based on a long & intimate relationship with the land; this landscape is still part of that tradition. The First Nations petroglyphs (carvings) & pictographs (paintings) that cover the park's sheer sandstone cliffs are protected here as a legacy to this spiritual connection of a people with a place.

Writing-on-Stone became a provincial park in January 1957. The park's archaeological preserve was established in 1977 to ensure protection of the largest concentration of rock art on the North American Plains.

The park provides a 64-site campground amid the riverside cottonwoods and willows. Showers, power hook-ups, tap water and flush toilets are available.

The site's sandstone provided a canvas for First Nations artists who carved their petroglyph reliefs with sticks and animal bones.

Pictographs, in contrast, are flat paintings in ochre pigments derived from combining iron ore with animal fat.

The earliest of the rock art--dating back 5000 years--preceded the arrival of the Blackfoot, who dominated the previously resident Shoshoni, Sioux, Assiniboine and Gros Ventre people. The Blackfoot, with firearms acquired from European traders in the mid -1700s, were militarily superior and took possession of what is now southwestern Alberta and northern Montana.

Modern vandals damaged much of the rock art. The area is now a closed archaeological preserve and visitors are permitted only as part of guided tours. Damage to rock art or fossils risks fines of up to $50,000.

The park provides plenty of space to hike outside of the archaeological preserve, but avoid the long grasses, where prairie rattlesnakes may lurk. Birders may spy cliff and bank swallows, prairie falcons, ferruginous hawks, and golden eagles.

Other wildlife species include pronghorn, coyote, red fox, badger, and marmot.

Near the Alberta-Montana boundary, 32 km east of Milk River on Hwy. 501 and 10 km south on access road.