Grande Prairie

Grande Prairie is a city in northwest Alberta, Canada within the southern portion of an area known as Peace River Country. It is located at the intersection of Highway 43 (part of the CANAMEX Corridor) and Highway 40 (the Bighorn Highway), approximately northwest of Edmonton. The city is surrounded by the County of Grande Prairie No. 1. Grande Prairie was the seventh-largest city in Alberta in 2016, with a population of 63,166, and was one of Canada's fastest growing cities between 2001 and 2006, and Canada's northernmost city with more than 50,000 people. The city adopted the trumpeter swan as an official symbol due to its proximity to the migration route and summer nesting grounds of this bird. For that reason, Grande Prairie is sometimes nicknamed the "Swan City". The dinosaur has also emerged as an unofficial symbol of the city due to paleontology discoveries in the areas north and west of Grande Prairie. The Grande Prairie area was historically known as Buffalo Plains, after the buffalo who would traverse the large prairie which lies to the north, east, and west of it. Émile Grouard, a Roman Catholic Priest, was the first to refer to the area as La Grande Prairie. In the 18th century, the prairie was occupied by bands of the Dane-zaa (Beaver) peoples, who began, in the early 19th century, trading with the North West Company at Dunvegan. The earliest recorded reference to the prairie was by Hudson Bay trader Samuel Black in 1824. In 1880, as a result of the fur trade war between the Hudson Bay Company (which merged with the North West Company in 1821), and independent fur traders, centering around Dunvegan, a Hudson's Bay Company outpost called La Grande Prairie was established by George Kennedy. The post was established South of Dunvegan and north west of the present day city of Grande Prairie, south east of La Glace Lake, and west of what is now the Town of Sexsmith (the 1896 version of this building was moved and restored and now stands near the Grande Prairie Museum).

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Related concepts (3)

Calgary

Calgary (ˈkælɡəri ) is a city in the Canadian province of Alberta. It is the largest city in Alberta and the largest metro area within the three Prairie Provinces region. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, making it the third-largest city and fifth-largest metropolitan area in Canada.

Grande Prairie

Edmonton

Edmonton (ˈɛdməntən ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Alberta. Edmonton is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Alberta's central region. The city anchors the northern end of what Statistics Canada defines as the "Calgary–Edmonton Corridor," a region spanning between Edmonton and the city of Calgary, which includes the many smaller municipalities between the two.