Swift Current City Overview
(Go to the Swift Current Sport Hotels Section)

Driving west from Moose Jaw along the Trans-Canada Highway, it's about 180km to Swift Current, a small industrial city and farm-research centre that's mostly a convenient stopoff on the long journey on the Trans-Canada between Regina and Calgary, in Alberta.

Swift Current has a few modest attractions, the best of which are in Kinetic Park, at 17th Avenue and South Railway Street East, where you'll find a Mennonite Heritage Village, consisting of a long rectangular house and adjoining barn built in 1911­15 and six buildings comprising Doc's Town, a replica of an early twentieth-century prairie village ­ highlights are a fully functioning windmill, a one-room prairie schoolhouse, and an old dance hall (now a tearoom), transported here from a rural Saskatchewan town. The only other worthwhile stopoff is the Art Gallery of Swift Current, 411 Herbert St E, where you'll see changing exhibitions of paintings, sculpture and ceramics by artists from Saskatchewan and elsewhere in Canada.

Perhaps the best reason for stopping at Swift Current is its proximity to the Great Sand Hills, over 1900 square kilometres of giant active sand dunes, which is home to hordes of hopping kangaroo rats as well as mule deer and antelope. The best place to view the dunes is 1.5km south off Hwy 32, at the village of Sceptre, to the north of the hills. The small Great Sandhills Museum on Hwy 32 has displays on the ecology of the hills and can provide information about tours.

About 50km further east from the Great Sand Hills, reached by Hwy 32 (or Hwy 4 north from Swift Current), is the pretty little Saskatchewan Landing Provincial Park, situated on both banks of the South Saskatchewan River, where it emerges from razorback hills and opens out into the large, finger-like man-made Lake Diefenbaker, created in 1967. The park area was once an important river crossing for Native Canadians and early white settlers, and the staff at the Goodwin House Visitors' Centre located in the park, a beautiful circa 1900 stone house built by a retired member of the North West Mounted Police, can organize nature-trail hikes through coulees and explain the significance of the crossing ­ once one of the most difficult river crossings in western Canada. There are remains of several ancient tepee encampments in the area. You can camp in the north of the park at the Bear Paw Campgroundand rent kayaks at the small marina.

From Swift Current it's another 130km to Maple Creek, situated just 8km to the south of the highway on the way to the Cypress Hills. Nicknamed "old cow town", Maple Creek lies at the heart of ranching country, and its streets are full of pick-up trucks, cowboy boots and stetsons, reaching wild heights in early September for the Cowboy Poetry Gathering, a literary celebration of the wrangler that draws cowboys from across North America. Some of the late nineteenth-century brick storefronts have survived, and the trim and tidy Old Timers' Museum at 218 Jasper St has pleasant displays on pioneer life and the Mounties. The place is also the market town for a number of Hutterite colonies, whose women stand out with their floral dresses and headscarves.

Swift Current Saskatchewan has great opportunities for sport tournaments of all kinds. Sport tourism is a part of Swift Current Saskatchewan and it features a wide variety of sport tournament opportunities.