Trail Riding near Canmore
Canmore & Kananaskis Country
The Canadian Rockies town of Canmore, located just 15-minutes from Banff National Park, is a town literally built around recreation and entertainment.
See our new panorama of Canmore, 144Kb
From the 1890s up until the late 1970s, Canmore was a coal-mining town. When the mines closed in 1979 due to low demand for coal, it probably didn’t occur to people living there that the town had a future as a resort and recreation destination. The province dismantled most of the mining infrastructure over the next year, and the town’s population dwindled from 6,500 to a low of about 3,000. In many ways, Canmore became a blank slate, waiting for some new future to make its mark.
That came in 1980s, when the Canmore Nordic Center was constructed for the 1988 Winter Olympics, putting the town on the map as a recreation destination.
“That was really the turning point,” says Donna Trautman, manager of Rocky Mountain Ski Lodge in Canmore, and a long time resident.
The following decades would see incredible changes—the town became known not just for the Nordic Center, but also for the wide array of recreation activities it offers. The population boomed to its current 16,000, and an infrastructure to support tourism sprang up. Canmore now hosts a wide selection of stunning full service hotels, charming bed and breakfasts and every accommodation in between, as well as an eclectic collection of world-class restaurants, pubs and patios. Read more.
You can check out our Live Web Cam feed for Canmore, Alberta.
Add to Google
