Provincial parks and historic sites

The province of Alberta protects many natural areas and historic sites and museums.

Provincial parks

Alberta’s parks and protected areas cover 27,500 square kilometers (10,620 square miles) and include more than 500 sites. There's a provincial park or recreation area within an hour’s drive of every Alberta community.

Protected areas range from ecological reserves, where public access is walk-in only to provincial recreation areas which have been intensively developed for outdoor recreation.

Alberta's provincial parks and protected areas provide access to some of the most spectacular natural landscapes in the world, including one of the richest dinosaur finds in the world, the largest collection of aboriginal rock art on the North American Plains, Canada's most northerly bird observatory, glaciers and majestic mountains, and so much more.

Some of the best known provincial parks include

• Dinosaur Provincial Park, Brooks – contains one of the world's richest dinosaur fossil sites, Canada's largest area of badlands, and unique cottonwood riverside habitat.

• Cypress Hills Provincial Park, Medicine Hat – stretches into Saskatchewan on the highest land between the Rocky Mountains and Labrador that was not glaciated with the last ice age, providing an oasis of forest in the prairies.

• Lakeland Provincial Park, Lac La Biche – park of numerous lakes which provides Alberta’s only canoe multi-day circuit.

• Fish Creek Provincial Park, Calgary – one of the largest urban parks in North America.

• Vermilion Provincial Park, Vermillion – set in the Vermillion River valley, this park is popular for camping in the summer and cross-country skiing in the winter.

• Willmore Wilderness Park – a large wilderness park on the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains, near Hinton and Grande Cache.

• Writing-on-Stone Provincial Park, MilkRiver – sacred landscape for Blackfoot people with the greatest concentrations of rock art in the North American Great Plains created in the park’s sheer sandstone cliffs.

Provincial historic sites and museums

Alberta protects 17 historic sites and museums to preserve Alberta’s history:

• Brooks Aqueduct – irrigation museum near Brooks.

• Father Lacombe Chapel / Chapelle du Père Lacombe – missionary church built by Father Albert Lacombe in 1861 in St. Albert.

• Frank Slide Interpretive Centre – site of 1903 rock slide tragedy in in Frank.

• Fort George and Buckingham House – fur trade post near Elk Point.

• Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump – First Nations historical site near Fort Macleod, also a UNESCO World Heritage Site and National Historic Site of Canada.

• Historic Dunvegan – fur trade post and mission near Fairview.

• Leitch Collieries – coal mine, Crowsnest Pass.

• Lougheed House – sandstone mansion from 1891 in Calgary.

• Oil Sands Discovery Centre – oil sands mining display, Fort McMurray.

• Okotoks Erratic – giant rock left by glaciers, Okotoks.

• Remington Carriage Museum – collection of horse-drawn forms of transportation, Cardston.

• Reynolds-Alberta Museum – machinery and transportation, aviation hall of fame, Wetaskiwin.

• Royal Alberta Museum – official provincial museum, Edmonton.

• Royal Tyrrell Museum – dinosaurs and paleontology, near Drumheller.

• Rutherford House – home of Alberta's first premier, University of Alberta, Edmonton.

• Stephansson House – home of famous Icelandic poet Stephan G. Stephansson,near Red Deer.

• Turner Valley Gas Plant – site of early oil discovery, near Calgary.

• Tyrrell Field Station – field station of Tyrrell Museum, near Brooks.

• Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village – recreation of early Ukrainian settlement in Canada, near Edmonton.

• Victoria Settlement – early pioneer settlement, near Smoky Lake.

Date Updated: Mar 10, 2011
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