Heritage Park Historical Village

Heritage Park opened in 1964 on a peninsula in the Glenmore Reservoir and covers around sixty-four hectares with more than a hundred and eighty exhibits, which makes it the largest living history museum in Canada. It is organised by period: a fur trade fort and First Nations encampment, an 1880s prairie settlement, a 1910 railway town with a working steam locomotive on a loop of track, and a 1930s to 1950s main street. Staff in period dress run a bakery, a print shop and a working blacksmith, and a paddlewheeler, the SS Moyie, takes passengers on the reservoir. Antique midway rides operate in the railway town.

What you actually see

• The steam train - a working locomotive circling the site.
• The period streets - fur trade through to the postwar era in sequence.
• The paddlewheeler - a sternwheeler running on the Glenmore Reservoir.
• The working trades - bakery, blacksmith and printer staffed in costume.

When to go

May to September for the full village with staff, train and boat; the front section stays open year-round with a Christmas programme, but most of the historic village closes.

Honest expectations

Most of the site is closed outside the summer season, so a winter ticket buys much less. It is large and involves a lot of walking. Summer weekends and school groups make it busy.

Nearby

Calgary downtown lies north; the Rockies are an hour west.