The town of Shaunavon is located in southwest Saskatchewan at the junction of Highways 37 and 13. It is 110 kilometres from Swift Current, 163 kilometres from the Alberta border and 74 kilometres from the Montana border. Shaunavon was established in 1913 along the Canadian Pacific Railway line.The town has several nicknames including Bone Creek Basin, Boomtown, and Oasis of the Prairies. The latter name is derived from the park located in the centre of town. The Shaunavon Formation, a stratigraphical unit of the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin is named for the town.HistoryPre-colonial HistoryPre-contact & early European contact (Shaunavon prior to 1913)Before 1000 CE, only two distinct technological traditions were present on the Canadian plains. Archaeologists refer to them as the Besant and Avonlea phases. Besant sites first appeared on the eastern plains of Minnesota about 200 BCE. Makers of Avonlea technology first appeared in the arid southern plains of Alberta and Saskatchewan three centuries later. There is no physical or documentary evidence of a widespread and deadly “disorder” among game animals in the archaeological record, but by the 1760s HBC (Hudson Bay Company) employees were reporting game shortages along the North Saskatchewan River. Archaeological studies on the northern Great Plains have uncovered the influence of the fur trade from as early as the 1670s. Recognizing the arrival and impact of epidemic disease known as “virgin soil epidemic”, historical experience of indigenous populations.