National Network for Equitable Library Service

Alberta is more than just black gold, wheat fields and stampedes--it has a fascinating, bizarre and amazing history: Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is named after a brave who got too close to the action and was squashed as a result; Red River carts made such an obnoxious noise that the Metis blamed them for driving the bison off the prairies; Fur trader Peter Pond planted Alberta's first garden in 1779; The Calgary-Edmonton corridor, Alberta's most urbanized area, was originally a natural glacier corridor; In 1907, Lesser Slave Lake dried up, and the government built a road across it--but the water came back and nobody knows where the road is today; The price for a corner lot in Calgary was $450 in 1883; John Ware, one of Alberta's most famous cowboys, began life as a slave in the U.S.; Canada's first female combat soldier and first female fighter pilots completed their training at Alberta military bases in 1989; And more great facts about how the West was won.