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You’ll see wildlife here, perhaps the majestic – and the still “threatened” –<br />
Trumpeter Swan that migrates to our lakes and sloughs in late April to nest<br />
and to raise its young, or you’ll see Canada geese snacking in fields or hear<br />
them honking as they fly overhead. If you keep a watchful eye, you’ll also spot<br />
moose, elk, mule deer, white tail deer, foxes, coyote and beaver.<br />
With a wide open sky that overlooks gently rolling prairie, Alberta’s first county<br />
has a little bit of everything within its borders. It spans the Saddle Hills in the<br />
north to the Wapiti River in the south, and stretches east from the Smoky River<br />
to the B.C. border. The county surrounds a mid-sized city and encompasses<br />
towns, a village, several hamlets, county residential communities and a First<br />
Nations reserve.<br />
Travelling west on sunny days, particularly in winter, you’ll catch tantalizing glimpses<br />
of our majestic neighbours, the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains. From atop the<br />
3100 foot Saskatoon Mountain in the west county, you can view the panorama of land<br />
that inspires artists and that enamoured the homesteaders who travelled the<br />
harrowing Edson Trail just a century ago to settle here. But this rise of land is no<br />
stranger to human habitation; archeologists have found evidence of humans here<br />
dating back 9000 – 10,000 B.C. when the now fertile farmland below would have<br />
been covered by a vast glacier.<br />
The County of Grande Prairie is becoming known internationally for its prehistoric<br />
resources. Paleontologists are busy excavating dinosaur fossils at Kleskun Hill,<br />
Pipestone Creek and the Red Willow River.<br />
They’ve recently found skeletons of duck-billed hadrosaur dinosaurs along the Red<br />
Willow River, several of which even have preserved skin impressions showing their<br />
knobby, scaly hide. This dinosaur is very unique and grew up to three tons and ten<br />
feet tall.<br />
• Bad Heart Straw Church<br />
• Bear Lake Park<br />
• Crosslinks County Sportsplex<br />
• Demmitt Park<br />
• Evergreen Park<br />
• Hommy Park<br />
• Kleskun Hill Natural Area<br />
• Melsness Mercantile Valhalla Centre<br />
• Morningview Park Golf Course<br />
• Old Bezanson Townsite<br />
• Pipestone Creek Park<br />
• Pipestone Creek Golf Club<br />
• Red Willow Park<br />
• Riverbend Golf & Country Club<br />
• River Stone Golf Course & Campground<br />
• Saskatoon Island Provincial Park<br />
• Saskatoon Mountain Viewpoint<br />
• South Peace Centennial Museum<br />
• Spring Lake Resort<br />
• Spruce Meadows Golf and Country Club<br />
• The Dunes Golf & Winter Club<br />
• Valhalla Park<br />
• Wapiti Nordic Ski Trails<br />
The Pipestone Creek Bone-bed is one of the densest<br />
accumulations of dinosaur bones in the world and holds the<br />
remains of hundreds of horned dinosaurs washed onto a<br />
floodplain including the the first dinosaur named from the<br />
region, Pachyrhinosaurus Lakustai, was recently featured on<br />
the Royal Canadian Mint’s first glow-in-the-dark coin. This<br />
dinosaur was found in a massive bonebed at Pipestone Creek<br />
containing thousands of bones from animals the size of a<br />
dog up to the size of a rhinoceros. During the summer, you<br />
can take an interpretive walk at Pipestone Creek to visit an<br />
active dinosaur dig and imagine what the area was like 73<br />
million years ago when it teemed with dinosaurs, crocodiles,<br />
and turtles living in lush, swampy forests like those of the<br />
southern US instead of the more familiar aspen and spruce<br />
that fill the creek valley today.<br />
www.gptourism.ca<br />
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