Skip to main content

Lloydminster Border Markers - Alberta / Saskatchewan

Image
By


The border markers that stand tall accentuate the story of Canada's border city. It's a story of a town, but two provinces. Lloydminster straddles the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan, and there are four giant red border markers at about 100 feet tall each in the center of town around the vicinity of City Hall and the Yellowhead Highway (Highway 16 in both provinces). Near the crossing of Highway 16 and Highway 17 (which follows the border between the two provinces) next to Lloydminster City Hall, the four markers stand on the boundary, representing the four themes of the story of Lloydminster, which includes the oil and gas industry, the Barr Colonists that founded Lloydminster, agriculture, and First Nations and Métis peoples. The gap between the steel pillars of each monument represents the actual border, and the border markers were erected in 1994.

Lloydminster was first settled by the Barr Colonists in 1903, which predated the creation of the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan, which became a province in 1905. The provincial border runs through the middle of the city through the Dominion Land Survey's Fourth Meridian, also known as the 110th meridian west. In 1930, Lloydminster was chartered in both provinces, thus making it the only municipality in North America to be chartered in two jurisdictions. However, modern GPS has shown that the border and meridian are slightly off. In 2005, it was discovered that the Fourth Meridian, which was surveyed during the 1870s, had turned out to be inaccurate. As a result, the true meridian doesn't run north-south along Lloydminster's 50th Avenue, but rather a few blocks to the east. However, the border markers are not going anywhere, standing as a testament to Lloydminster's unique status in the world.



Traveling east on the Yellowhead Highway (AB 16/SK 16), where a sign marking the border has been placed near one of the tall border markers.

Traveling west on the Yellowhead Highway, you can see two of the border markers (one is obscured by the trees). AB/SK 17 follows the provincial border as well.



How to Get There:



Sources and Links:
Tourisme Alberta - Border Markers
Tony Bloom Studios - Border Markers
City of Lloydminster - Border Markers
Behind the Hedge - North Along the Fourth Meridian
Conde Nast Traveler - The Strange Story Behind One Canadian City's Border Confusion (Ken Jennings - February 23, 2015)
Labels:
Location: 4411 50 Ave, Lloydminster, AB S9V 1Z9, Canada

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did Caltrans just kill the G26 cutout US Route shields?

By
The US Route System was formally created by the American Association of State Highway Officials during November 1926.  Through the history of the system the only state to which has elected to maintain cutout US Route shields has been California.  The G26 series cutout US Route shields have become a favorite in the road enthusiast hobby and are generally considered to be much more visually pleasing than the standard Federal Highway Administration variant.  However, the G26 shield series appears to have been killed off on January 18, 2026, when Caltrans updated their Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices.  This blog will examine the history of the US Route shield specifications in California and what is happening with the 2026 changes.  The blog cover photo is facing towards the terminus of California State Route 136 and at a G26-2 specification US Route 395 shield.  In the background Mount Whitney can be seen in the Sierra Nevada range.   ...
2 comments
Read more

May 2023 Ontario Trip (Part 3 of 3)

By
  Over the years, I have made plenty of trips to Ontario, crisscrossing the southern, central and eastern parts of the province. Living in Upstate New York, it's pretty easy to visit our neighbor to the north, or is that our neighbor to the west? Ottawa is one of my favorite cities to visit anywhere in the world, plus I've discovered the charm of Kingston, the waterfalls of Hamilton (which is on the same Niagara Escarpment that brings us Niagara Falls), the sheer beauty of the Bruce Peninsula, and more. But I hadn't explored much of Cottage Country. So I decided to change that, and what better time to go than over Memorial Day weekend, when the daylight is long and I have an extra day to explore. On the third and final day of my trip, I started in Huntsville and made my way through Muskoka District and Haliburton County, passing by many lakes along the way. I stopped in towns such as Dorset, Haliburton and Bancroft before making a beeline down to Belleville and then over th...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ghost Town Tuesday; Nichols, FL

By
A couple years ago I spent a lot of spare time exploring phosphate mining ghost towns in the Bone Valley of Polk County, Florida.  One ghost town in particular called Nichols on Polk County Route 676 west of Mulberry caught my eye due to a relative lack of documentation on ghosttowns.com. Nichols was created in 1905 during the early phosphate mining boom in the Bone Valley region.  For the time Nichols was unusual since it had company housing in the Nichols Mine site and private residences outside the gate.  Nichols is only about two miles west of Mulberry which probably made it a somewhat reasonable commute even by the wonky standards of the early 20th Century.  Most of the Bone Valley region was relatively remote which made commuting or homesteading impractical which is why there are so many ghost towns in the area.  The company housing section of Nichols was phased out and abandoned by 1950. The Nichols town site is largely abandoned and could "possibl...
4 comments
Read more