About the town » Grande Prairie, Alberta, Canada

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 456 km northwest of Edmonton. The city is surrounded by the County of Grande Prairie No. 1. Grande Prairie is the seventh-largest city in Alberta with a population 55,032 recorded by the 2011 Census, and was one of Canada's fastest growing cities between 2001 and 2006. It is the largest city between Edmonton and Fairbanks, Alaska. The city adopted the trumpeter swan as an official symbol due to is 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 emerged as an unofficial symbol of the city due to paleontology discoveries in the area west of the Grande Prairie.