Drumheller

About Drumheller

Drumheller sits at the bottom of the Red Deer River valley, where the flat wheat country of central Alberta suddenly drops into banded badlands. Coal mining built the town in the early twentieth century, but the layers of rock exposed by the river turned out to hold something more enduring: one of the richest fossil records of the late Cretaceous anywhere, which is why dinosaurs now define its identity.

Most visits revolve around the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, set just outside town in Midland Provincial Park, where mounted skeletons and active preparation labs make the science feel immediate. Back downtown, the fiberglass World's Largest Dinosaur lets visitors climb up to a lookout in its jaws. West of town, Horseshoe Canyon offers easy scrambles into eroded gullies, while the Dinosaur Trail loop links Horsethief Canyon viewpoints with the small cable-operated Bleriot Ferry across the river. To the southeast, the Hoodoos Trail leads to capped sandstone pillars, and the Atlas Coal Mine National Historic Site preserves a wooden tipple and the stories of the miners who worked the valley.

Families and road-trippers make up much of the crowd, and two or three days covers the main sights comfortably. Summer brings heat and the busiest museum days, so early starts help. A side trip to the hamlet of Rosebud, known for its professional theater, rounds out a stay nicely.