Once a favourite route for Prohibition whiskey smugglers like the notorious Emilio Picariello, this small valley in southern Alberta now has only a historical marker to remind visitors of its colourful past.
But its remote location just a stone's throw from the United States border makes it ideal for continued use by modern smugglers who deal instead in marijuana, cocaine and human cargo.
"When you get out to the farmland and the Prairie land down here, it's definitely an attractive venue for some of them, and they definitely do come out and try," said RCMP Const. Jeff Smith of I-BET, the Integrated Border Enforcement Team based in Raymond, Alta.
The most recent incident occurred in December 2005 when a 21-year-old drug mule was caught attempting to smuggle 32 kilograms of cocaine into Canada. Kenneth Holland was being pursued by the border patrol when he drove through a barbed wire fence and became stuck in the snow.
He escaped on foot and was later caught after a 23-kilometre chase. Holland, who was sentenced in June to 10 years in prison, confessed he had made other cross-border drug runs in the months before his arrest.
"You do get some people driving across there, but if you get to some of the more remote areas, you start dealing with dirt bikes and quads, and we do see that as well," said Const. Smith.
Whiskey Gap lies about 300 kilometres south of Calgary near the Del Bonita border entry. During the 1920s and '30s it was a booming hamlet with a general store, restaurant, pool hall, blacksmith, lumberyard and three grain elevators.
The gap through the hills was originally used by 1860s and 1870s American traders who crossed the border to trade goods and alcohol for buffalo robes and furs.
During the 1916-1924 Prohibition period in Alberta, booze was smuggled through from the United States. Later, when the U.S. declared its own Prohibition, it flowed in the opposite direction.
Emilio Picariello started a thriving bootlegging business in 1918 and became a familiar face in Whiskey Gap. The man known as "Emperor Pic" was eventually hanged along with accomplice Florence Lossandro in 1923 for the murder of a police officer.
"This old Emil Picariello drove through with a load or two and the police were chasing him at the time," said Raymond Hodgson, 86, who heard the story from his father Jerome.
"His son and the girl that hung with old Picariello were in this convoy and his son was in front with a load of booze," said Mr. Hodgson, who still lives in the family home just a kilometre away from the original site of the community.
"His son dropped a bottle of whiskey on the road for the police (to slow them down)," he laughed. "That was the last he saw of it. The police stopped to grab it for evidence. Dad didn't know whether they caught them or not."
Patricia Schmaltz, 83, of Lethbridge was just a girl when she lived in Whiskey Gap in the early 1930s. Everyone knew about the smuggling, but no one was supposed to talk about it.
"It was just sort of acknowledged. We would hear somebody was coming through with a load of liquor and of course nobody told anything to the kids," said Ms. Schmaltz, whose father ran the Alberta Pacific Grain Company elevator at the time.
"You just had to pick it up from what people would say when they didn't think you were watching or listening."
Police had been keeping a close eye on the Whiskey Gap area for decades and would often stop by to warn Lynn Sommerfeldt to watch for smugglers coming through the hills.
"That had been going on (the smuggling) for 20 or 30 years. I mean, we worked daily with the police to report things and stuff," said Mr. Sommerfeldt, 69, who now lives in Lethbridge but at one point owned land all the way to the U.S. border.
"Another thing they were concerned about was there were a lot of people being smuggled through there in the last 20 years as well," he added.
Mr. Sommerfeldt said people had been wandering through the area from the Montana border for years, often carrying backpacks, and no one thought anything of it.
According to the legend of Whiskey Gap, rum-runners being chased by the law would drop loads of illicit booze into sinkholes in the area. The wooden casks would sink to the bottom and eventually resurface to be picked up a few days later when the heat was off.
That has led to any number of amateur historians searching for kegs of whiskey that never got collected.
"It's probably true because I've heard the story several times from different people," said Mr. Sommerfeldt.
To date, none of the lost kegs has been found.
As for modern-day smuggling, police still keep a watchful eye.
"Any smuggling across the border is an issue, whether it be illegal drugs or whether it be human smuggling," Const. Smith said. "But is it running rampant? I think not."