A Short History of Calgary

Hello everyone,
Calgary...the city that is booming. Established in 1875, this year the population just reached over one million. The average home price is $500,000 and homes that were bought five years have now doubled in price. Some Calgarians love it...others...not so much. The traffic is beginning to look like Toronto. Lots of lanes closed with not much work being done.
The city looks out to our Canadian Rockies. This mountain range runs all the way down to Mexico and was created between 65-100 million years ago. The Canadian Rockies are now protected by a series of national parks. The hot springs in Banff Park was discovered by three Canadian Pacific Railroad workers in 1883 and this lead to the creation of our first national park...Banff National Park in 1885. This park covers an area of 6,641 kms of some of Canada's most famous scenery including buffalo. These huge animals roamed the area and at one time numbered nearly 60,000,000 until the European settlers of the 18th and 19th century nearly hunted them to extinction. By 1900 less than 1,000 animals remained. In 1874 a rancher called Walking Coyote bred a small herd of just 716 plains buffalo whose descendants now roam our parks.
Calgary is also home to the world famous Calgary Stampede. The is a 10 day celebration every July that is held in Stampede Park. It started as an agricultural fair in 1886 and in the 1920's the famous Chuck Wagon Races started and today the winner of the Chuck Wagon race receives a cheque for $100,000. Stampede Park is also home to the Saddledome Arena, home of the Calgary Flames. In 1988 Calgary was also home to the Olympic Winter games.