 Before stopping places developed, caches were set up at stopping points along the way.Before the arrival of rails the waterways such as the Lesser Slave Lake near Athabasca, Alberta and the Saskatchewan River near Prince Albert were traversed by long boat, canoe, and steamship.The rail did not reach the northern areas until the early twentieth century due to the geological hurdles of mountains, muskeg, swamp, boreal forest, and river systems to traverse.