For thousands of years, people hunting game most likely traveled this ridge because it provided a dry route above the lake-dotted prairie. The earliest inhabitants of this region hunted woolly mammoths and musk-ox. Beginning with the dominance of prairie about 9,000 years ago, bison and elk provided new sources of food, clothing and furs. Red Rock Ridge is part of a series of quartzite outcroppings fringing the eastern edge of the "Coteau des Prairies," a high bedrock plateau named by early French explorers, sculpted by glaciers, and once covered by prairie.