World Wonders - UnescoCome, see and enjoy what's in 'my backyard' ! Unesco's World Heritage Sites here in AlbertaWelcome to some of the most scenic regions of southern, Alberta and the world.
World Wonders Unesco (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)
Canada's World Heritage sites
An informative site to visit.
We have five of the World Wonders in Alberta.Map of Alberta Four are in 'my backyard' of southern Alberta! All can be visited in day trips from Calgary
Alberta Travelonly
will help you get here.
Canadaian Rocky Mountain ParksSome of the BEST-KNOWN mountain scenery on Earth is found here in our four national parks - Banff, Jasper, Yoho and Kootenay.Banff, built around the Cave and Basin Hot Springs fround by the CPR workers building the transcontinental railway in the early 1880s, became Canada's first park preserve in 1885. And the birthplace of Canada's national park system. In the following years the park was expanded and encompassed a wealth of natural wonders. Snow-capped mountains, silt-laden glacial streams and turquoise lakes, the Columbia Icefield and the Castleguard Caves. The Burgess Shale, in Yoho, contains one of the world's most significant finds of soft bodied, Middle Cambrian-age marine fossils. With about 150 species, including some bearing no resemblance to known animals.
Waterton Lakes National Park1931, the Rotary Clubs of Alberta, Canada and Montana, USA proposed uniting Waterton Lakes National Park and Glacier National Park.The Waterton Glacier International Peace Park, the first such park in the world. Together they protect 4,577-square-kilometres of; High mountains and deep canyons, forest belts and praire grasslands, deep glacial-trough lakes and rivers that feed three oceans. The diversity of wildlife is outstanding; mountain goats, bighorn ship, coyotes, grizzly bears, herds of elk and birds. An aboriginal presence in the region goes back 12,000 years. For the First Nations peoples there remain places of deep significance.
Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo JumpThe biggest, oldest and best-preserved buffalo jump in North America is the Head-Smached-In (or estipah-skikikini-kots in Blackfoot) Buffalo Jump in the Porcupine Hills of southwestern Alberta.For thousands of years, the bison provided the aboriginal peoples of North America's Great Plains with many of life's requirements. Meat for food, hides for clothing, and shelter, bones for tools and dung for fires. The principle means of killing these huge beasts was the buffalo jump. Where large numbers were stampeded over cliffs and butchered at the bottom. Great skill, determination and courage was required for the success of the buffalo hunt.
Dinosaur Provincial ParkAt the heart of Alberta's badlands are the greatest concentration of Late Cretaceous dinosaur fossils yet found on earth.SEVENTY-FIVE MILLION years ago, what is now eastern Alberta was a low-lying coastal plain at the edge of a large shallow sea. Countless creatures flourished - fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, primitive mammals and about 35 species of dinosaures. So it was, until the end of the latest Ice Age, 13,000 years ago when glacial ic scraped off the upper layers of rock exposing the fossil-bearing sediments. Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller since 1985 has housed the largest collection of dinosaur skeletons from the park.
Wood Buffalo National ParkThe second largest national park in the world
This vast chunk of lonely boreal forest and shallow lakes is home to the world’s largest free-roaming herd of wood bison (more than 2,100 remain) and is the last natural nesting habitat of the rare whooping crane (183 individuals were counted in 1999). It was for these reasons Wood Buffalo National Park was deemed a UNESCO site in 1983.
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