Medicine Hat is a city in

southeast The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each sepa ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

, Canada. It is located along the

South Saskatchewan River The South Saskatchewan River is a major river in Canada that flows through the provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan. For the first half of the 20th century, the South Saskatchewan would completely freeze over during winter, creating spectacular ...

. It is approximately east of Lethbridge and southeast of

Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, maki ...

. This city and the adjacent Town of Redcliff to the northwest are within Cypress County. Medicine Hat was the sixth-largest city in Alberta in 2016 with a population of 63,230. It is also the sunniest place in Canada according to Environment and Climate Change Canada, averaging 2,544 hours of sunshine a year. Started as a railway town, today Medicine Hat is served by the

Trans-Canada Highway The Trans-Canada Highway (French: ; abbreviated as the TCH or T-Can) is a transcontinental federal–provincial highway system that travels through all ten provinces of Canada, from the Pacific Ocean on the west coast to the Atlantic Ocean on ...

( Highway 1) and the eastern terminus of the

Crowsnest Highway The Crowsnest Highway is an east-west highway in British Columbia and Alberta, Canada. It stretches across the southern portions of both provinces, from Hope, British Columbia to Medicine Hat, Alberta, providing the shortest highway connection b ...

( Highway 3). Nearby communities considered part of the Medicine Hat area include the Town of Redcliff (abutting the city's northwest boundary) and the hamlets of

Desert Blume Desert Blume is a hamlet in southern Alberta, Canada within Cypress County, adjacent to the southern boundary of Medicine Hat. The hamlet is located on southwest corner of South Boundary Road (Township Road 122) and Range Road 61A, southeast ...

, Dunmore,

Irvine Irvine may refer to: Places On Earth Antarctica *Irvine Glacier * Mount Irvine (Antarctica) Australia * Irvine Island *Mount Irvine, New South Wales Canada * Irvine, Alberta *Irvine Inlet, Nunavut United Kingdom *Irvine, North Ayrshire, Scot ...

, Seven Persons, and Veinerville. The Cypress Hills (including

Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park is a natural park in Canada straddling the Alberta / Saskatchewan boundary and jointly administered by the two provinces. Located south-east of Medicine Hat, it became Canada's first interprovincial park in ...

) is a relatively short distance (by car) to the southeast of the city. Historically, Medicine Hat has been known for its large

natural gas Natural gas (also called fossil gas or simply gas) is a naturally occurring mixture of gaseous hydrocarbons consisting primarily of methane in addition to various smaller amounts of other higher alkanes. Low levels of trace gases like carbon ...

fields, being immortalized by

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as having "all hell for a basement". Because of these reserves, the city is known as "The Gas City". In 2021, Medicine Hat became the first city in Canada to achieve "functional zero" chronic homelessness, defined as three consecutive months where three or fewer individuals experienced chronic homelessness. They were able to achieve this due to their adoption of a

Housing First Housing First is a policy that offers unconditional, permanent housing as quickly as possible to homeless people, and other supportive services afterward. It was first discussed in the 1990s, and in the following decades became government policy ...

policy to combat homelessness beginning in 2009.

History

Name origins and ancient history

The name "Medicine Hat" is an English interpretation of ''Saamis'' (SA-MUS) – the Blackfoot word for the eagle tail feather headdress worn by

medicine men A medicine man is a traditional healer and spiritual leader among the indigenous people of the Americas. Medicine Man or The Medicine Man may also refer to: Films * ''The Medicine Man'' (1917 film), an American silent film directed by Clifford ...

. Several legends are associated with the name of a mythical

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river serpent named ''Soy-yee-daa-bee'' – the Creator – who appeared to a hunter and instructed him to sacrifice his wife to get mystical powers which were manifested in a special hat. Another legend tells of a battle long ago between the

Blackfoot The Blackfoot Confederacy, ''Niitsitapi'' or ''Siksikaitsitapi'' (ᖹᐟᒧᐧᒣᑯ, meaning "the people" or " Blackfoot-speaking real people"), is a historic collective name for linguistically related groups that make up the Blackfoot or Bla ...

and the Cree in which a retreating Cree "Medicine Man" lost his headdress in the

. A number of natural factors have always made Medicine Hat a gathering place. The gently sloping valley with its converging waterways and hardy native cottonwood trees attracted both the migratory

bison Bison are large bovines in the genus ''Bison'' (Greek: "wild ox" (bison)) within the tribe Bovini. Two extant and numerous extinct species are recognised. Of the two surviving species, the American bison, ''B. bison'', found only in North ...

herds which passed through the area, and humans who used the waterways and hunted the bison. Before Europeans arrived, the historic Blackfoot, Cree and

Assiniboine The Assiniboine or Assiniboin people ( when singular, Assiniboines / Assiniboins when plural; Ojibwe: ''Asiniibwaan'', "stone Sioux"; also in plural Assiniboine or Assiniboin), also known as the Hohe and known by the endonym Nakota (or Nakoda ...

nations used the area for hundreds of years, and were preceded for thousands of years by previous indigenous cultures. Beginning in 1971, archeological excavations supervised by scholars from Medicine Hat College (MHC) were conducted at what became known as Saamis Archeological Site along Sev