"Provincial Highway 4", the precursor of the Trans–Canada Saskatchewan Highway 1, followed the surveyed grade of the transcontinental CPR between the Alberta and Manitoba border. Travel along Provincial Highway 4 before the 1940s would have been travelling on the "square" following the township road allowances, barbed wire fencing and rail lines. As the surveyed township roads were the easiest to travel, the first highway was designed on 90 degree right angle corners as the distance traversed the prairie along range roads and township roads. Two-horse then eight-horse scrapers maintained these early dirt roads.