Alberta's Rockies comprise the

Canadian Rocky Mountains The Canadian Rockies (french: Rocheuses canadiennes) or Canadian Rocky Mountains, comprising both the Alberta Rockies and the British Columbian Rockies, is the Canadian segment of the North American Rocky Mountains. It is the easternmost part ...

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest T ...

, Canada. On the southwestern part of the

province A province is almost always an administrative division within a country or state. The term derives from the ancient Roman ''provincia'', which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire's territorial possessions out ...

along the

British Columbia British Columbia (commonly abbreviated as BC) is the westernmost province of Canada, situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Rocky Mountains. It has a diverse geography, with rugged landscapes that include rocky coastlines, sandy beaches, for ...

border, the

region In geography, regions, otherwise referred to as zones, lands or territories, are areas that are broadly divided by physical characteristics ( physical geography), human impact characteristics ( human geography), and the interaction of humanity an ...

covers all but the south of Census Division 15. The main industry in this region is tourism.

Geography

The View from the Summit of Mount Weed on the Icefields Parkway in Banff National Park

This human region is almost identical to the

Alberta Mountain forests The Alberta Mountain forests are a temperate coniferous forests ecoregion of Western Canada, as defined by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) categorization system. Setting This ecoregion covers the grand Rocky Mountains of Alberta including the e ...

ecozone. The region contains the Central Front Ranges and the

Continental Ranges The Continental Ranges is a major grouping of mountain ranges in the Rocky Mountains located in eastern British Columbia and western Alberta. It is a physiographic designation for use by geologists and is not used by the general public; it is no ...

of the Canadian

Rocky Mountains The Rocky Mountains, also known as the Rockies, are a major mountain range and the largest mountain system in North America. The Rocky Mountains stretch in straight-line distance from the northernmost part of western Canada, to New Mexico ...

, and includes the

Banff National Park Banff National Park is Canada's oldest national park, established in 1885 as Rocky Mountains Park. Located in Alberta's Rocky Mountains, west of Calgary, Banff encompasses of mountainous terrain, with many glaciers and ice fields, dense co ...

and Jasper National Park, as well as the Kananaskis Country park system and the Willmore Wilderness. The main transportation corridors run through the Kicking Horse Pass and the

Yellowhead Pass The Yellowhead Pass is a mountain pass across the Continental Divide of the Americas in the Canadian Rockies. It is located on the provincial boundary between the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia, and lies within Jasper ...

from east to west, while the Bow Valley and

Athabasca River The Athabasca River (French: ''Rivière Athabasca'') is a river in Alberta, Canada, which originates at the Columbia Icefield in Jasper National Park and flows more than before emptying into Lake Athabasca. Much of the land along its banks is ...

valley are followed by the longitudinal Icefields Parkway. Another important waterway that crosses this region is the North Saskatchewan River.

Tourism

Some of the best

ski resort A ski resort is a resort developed for skiing, snowboarding, and other winter sports. In Europe, most ski resorts are towns or villages in or adjacent to a ski area – a mountainous area with pistes (ski trails) and a ski lift system. In Nort ...

s of the Rockies are located in this region, and are important tourist destinations. They include Fortress Mountain Resort, Lake Louise,

Marmot Basin Marmot Basin is an alpine ski area located on Marmot Mountain in Alberta's Jasper National Park. It has 91 named runs on four mountain faces with 3,000 vertical feet of drop. The area has a lift capacity of close to 12,000 skiers per hour on se ...

, Mount Norquay, Nakiska and

Sunshine Village Banff Sunshine Village (formerly Sunshine Village) is a ski resort in western Canada, located on the Continental Divide of the Canadian Rockies within Banff National Park in Alberta and Mt Assiniboine Provincial Park in British Columbia. It is on ...

. Other tourist attractions include the glaciers of the

Columbia Columbia may refer to: * Columbia (personification), the historical female national personification of the United States, and a poetic name for America Places North America Natural features * Columbia Plateau, a geologic and geographic region i ...

, Wapta and Waputik Icefields such as the Athabasca, Bow, Crowfoot, Hector, Peyto,

Saskatchewan Saskatchewan ( ; ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Western Canada, western Canada, bordered on the west by Alberta, on the north by the Northwest Territories, on the east by Manitoba, to the northeast by Nunavut, and on t ...

and Vulture Glaciers.

Glacial lake A glacial lake is a body of water with origins from glacier activity. They are formed when a glacier erodes the land and then melts, filling the depression created by the glacier. Formation Near the end of the last glacial period, roughly 10, ...

s line the Icefields Parkway and dot the surrounding valleys. Some of the more spectacular are Bow, Hector, Louise, Maligne,

Moraine A moraine is any accumulation of unconsolidated debris ( regolith and rock), sometimes referred to as glacial till, that occurs in both currently and formerly glaciated regions, and that has been previously carried along by a glacier or ice sh ...

, Peyto,

Pyramid A pyramid (from el, πυραμίς ') is a structure whose outer surfaces are triangular and converge to a single step at the top, making the shape roughly a pyramid in the geometric sense. The base of a pyramid can be trilateral, quadrilate ...

and

Vermilion Vermilion (sometimes vermillion) is a color, color family, and pigment most often made, since antiquity until the 19th century, from the powdered mineral cinnabar (a form of mercury sulfide, which is toxic) and its corresponding color. It i ...

lakes.

Infrastructure

Banff and

Jasper Jasper, an aggregate of microgranular quartz and/or cryptocrystalline chalcedony and other mineral phases,Kostov, R. I. 2010. Review on the mineralogical systematics of jasper and related rocks. – Archaeometry Workshop, 7, 3, 209-213PDF/ref ...

are the main communities in the region. The length is defined by the Icefields Parkway, and it is crossed by the

Trans-Canada Highway The Trans-Canada Highway (Canadian French, French: ; abbreviated as the TCH or T-Can) is a transcontinental federal–provincial highway system that travels through all ten provinces of Canada, from the Pacific Ocean on the west coast to the A ...

and the

Yellowhead Highway The Yellowhead Highway (french: Route Yellowhead) is a major interprovincial highway in Western Canada that runs from Winnipeg to Graham Island off the coast of British Columbia via Saskatoon and Edmonton. It stretches across the four western ...

into British Columbia. David Thompson Highway leads from the Rockies into

central Alberta Central Alberta is a region located in the Canadian province of Alberta. Central Alberta is the most densely populated rural area in the province. Agriculture and energy are important to the area's economy. Geography Central Alberta is bordered ...

from Saskatchewan River Crossing, and Banff Windermere Parkway leads from Castle Junction (south of Lake Louise) through the Kootenay National Park to the

Columbia River The Columbia River ( Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia ...

valley. The Bighorn Highway defines most of the eastern limit of the region. Health care has been the responsibility of

Alberta Health Services Alberta Health Services (AHS) which is headquartered in Edmonton, Alberta is the single health authority for the Canadian province of Alberta and the "largest integrated provincial health care system" in Canada. AHS delivers medical care on be ...

, since the province's health regions were amalgamated in 2008. Before then, Calgary Health Region was the health region ensuring well-being in the south of this region, while the north was supervised by the Aspen Regional Health Authority. Health care centres established in the area are: *Seton Jasper Healthcare Centre -

*Hinton Healthcare Centre - Hinton *Canmore General Hospital - Canmore *Banff Mineral Springs Hospital - Banff

Politics

On a provincial level, southern Alberta is represented in the

Legislative Assembly of Alberta The Legislative Assembly of Alberta is the deliberative assembly of the province of Alberta, Canada. It sits in the Alberta Legislature Building in Edmonton. The Legislative Assembly currently has 87 members, elected first past the post from si ...

by MLA's elected in the ridings of

Banff-Cochrane Banff-Cochrane was a provincial electoral district in Alberta, Canada, mandated to return a single member to the Legislative Assembly of Alberta from 1940 to 1975, and again from 1979 to 2019. The Banff-Cochrane electoral district is home to ...

and part of

Rocky Mountain House Rocky Mountain House is a town in west-central Alberta, Canada. It is approximately west of Red Deer at the confluence of the Clearwater and North Saskatchewan Rivers, and at the crossroads of Highway 22 (Cowboy Trail) and Highway 11 (David T ...

and

West Yellowhead West Yellowhead is a provinces and territories of Canada, provincial electoral district (Canada), electoral district in Alberta, Canada. The district is one of 87 current ridings mandated to return a single member to the Legislative Assembly o ...

Communities

The following communities are located in Alberta's Rockies. *

Towns A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world. Origin and use The word "town" shares an or ...

of Banff and Canmore * Municipality of

( specialized municipality) * Summer villages of Ghost Lake and Waiparous * Hamlets of Lake Louise, Harvie Heights,

Exshaw Exshaw is a hamlet in Alberta, Canada within Municipal District (MD) of Bighorn No. 8. Located approximately west of downtown Calgary and east of Canmore, Exshaw is situated within the Bow River valley north of the Bow River. The hamlet was ...

, Dead Man's Flats and Lac des Arcs * Saskatchewan River Crossing (unincorporated community) *

Kananaskis Village Kananaskis Village is an unincorporated community in Alberta's Rockies within the Kananaskis Country park system in the Kananaskis Improvement District of Alberta, Canada. It is located approximately south of the Trans-Canada Highway (Highway ...

(resort community) The towns of

Grande Cache Grande Cache is a hamlet in west-central Alberta, Canada within and administered by the Municipal District of Greenview No. 16. It is located on Highway 40 approximately northwest of Hinton and west of Edmonton. Grande Cache overlooks the Sm ...

and Hinton, located on the eastern edge of the Rockies, are sometimes considered as part of this region. The following

rural municipalities A rural municipality is a classification of municipality, a type of local government, found in several countries. These include: * Rural municipalities in Canada, a type of municipal status in the Canadian provinces of Manitoba, Saskatchewan, ...

are located in Alberta's Rockies. * Municipal District of Bighorn No. 8 * Improvement District No. 9 (

) * Improvement District No. 12 ( Jasper National Park) * Improvement District No. 25 (

Willmore Wilderness Park Willmore Wilderness Park, located in Alberta, Canada, is a wilderness area adjacent to Jasper National Park. It is lesser known and less visited than Jasper National Park. There are no public roads, bridges or buildings. There are, however, seve ...

) * Kananaskis Improvement District

References