The Red Coat Trail of southern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta runs near the route of the North West Mounted Police’s famous 1874 March West. Today, this lonely highway passes through a windswept land of ghostly abandoned towns. Johnnie Bachusky takes readers back to the heyday of these towns, which sprang up as settlers travelled west during the last great land rush. The Roaring Twenties brought bumper harvests, but also bootleggers and bank robbers; fortunes were won and lost in high-stakes poker games. The Great Depression devastated the region as disease, drought, dust storms and grasshoppers took their toll. History comes to life in these exciting true stories, from an account of a 1920s bank robbery in Manyberries to the tales of a boisterous Govenlock rancher who hunted with Buffalo Bill Cody and Wild Bill Hickok.

Johnnie Bachusky is a national award–winning journalist who has explored hundreds of ghost towns across western and northern Canada since the late 1990s. He has written dozens of ghost-town and heritage-related articles for newspapers and magazines in Canada. His heritage photography has been featured in national and international publications, and he has been consulted on and featured in many television and film documentaries. As well, he is the co-creator of three acclaimed websites about ghost towns and the heritage photography site Silent Structures. He lives with his wife Darlis, daughter Darlana, three cats and a hound in Red Deer, Alberta. And yes, in 2009 he was named Canada’s Worst Handyman on the Discovery Channel program of the same name.

Johnnie Bachusky's profile page