It’s most often a local who can give you the inside look into the places you really want to explore. So here’s a movie location specialist’s heightened perspective.
A new, online scenic driving route resource called Reel Alberta: Alberta Movie Maps is available to help you tour the many movie locations in southern Alberta. It provides you with film location driving tours, maps, attractions and movie insights.
In this story, you can refer to those maps, but see them through the eyes of someone in the movie industry who lives in Calgary and loves the south. Tina Alford, locations and logistics for Alberta Film, provided movie location information for the Reel Alberta project. Partners included Alberta Film and Travel Alberta, among others.
You can discover driving tours packages in Alberta, and read on to find the Reel Alberta.
Get on the Move
Southern Alberta is a movie director’s dream because of its varied terrain, Western history, and cities and towns. Rocky Mountains, prairies, rolling foothills, lakes and streams, and the Canadian Badlands with its hoodoos and dinosaur parks, are opportunities for travelers to discover culture and history – especially cowboy culture, with so many Westerns shot in Alberta.
Tina will be your guide below. You can click the headlines for route maps and more information.
“Making the drive west out of Calgary on Highway 1A let’s you see the majestic nature of the Rockies and the rolling plains. Legends of the Fall, Broken Trail, Open Range, and even the German westerns, have all shot and worked on the Stony Reserve and at the Nakoda Lodge.
You can visualize just before you get to Stony that big house in Legends of the Fall. The majority of sets there have been taken down and you do need permission to walk on the Stony Nation grounds, but it is a great adventure drive -- narrow in spots and curvy and fun. If you like driving stick, it requires some fun shifting of speeds.
Fort Macleod is definitely worth a stop. It’s close to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Brokeback Mountain shot there for a month, up and down the quaint town’s streets. It has several Chinese western restaurants and great shops and you can also take the Brokeback Walking Tour there during the summer, where they will walk you through where Brokeback shot and show you everything. By the way, that first kiss between Brokeback’s two main characters, was voted Best Kiss by MTV viewers 2006.
You can also stop and have a beer at the Queen’s Hotel. The drive from Fort Macleod to Pincher Creek is fantastic with windmills on the hills, vistas of the rolling hills and the mountains rising toward you. You could stop and check out the Frank Slide interpretive centre. The highly anticipated movie Passchendale due to come out in October, 2008 was also shot in Fort Macleod.
One of my favourite areas to explore on this route is Dinosaur Provincial Park near the town of Brooks, and this park is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I like to go on Badland walks and talks or a fossil safari hike, where you wander through hills and learn how to tell the difference between a bone and a fossil. Okay, here’s something I learned. If you put the fossil to the tip of your tongue, it will stick, but the bone will not.
Another fun thing to do is to stop in the Patricia Hotel, which has a great bar inside that is just filled with western paraphernalia. It also has the Snake Pit, where you can choose buffalo or bison steak and you walk to the back of the bar and barbeque it yourself or have them do it for you. And you can get a baked potato and a pilsner beer.
Another great drive is coming from Calgary down Highway 22 where you can visit ranches and the towns of Millarville, Black Diamond and Turner Valley. You have projects shooting there because it is ranching country. Many major television movies have shot there as Alberta doubles for Montana.
Try the Beef Jerky
In Turner Valley, stop in at the Chuckwagon, which has the best Eggs Benedict outside of Calgary. Longview Beef Jerky is a little shop that has some of the best beef jerky in history, and it’s Alberta beef. I’d also recommend a visit to the Bar U Ranch National Historic Site to get a good understanding of cowboy culture.
You can also find great Calgary shooting locations. I’d visit Heritage Park Historical Village, in the south of Calgary, where Brad Pitt walked during the filming of The Assassination of Jesse James. Go downtown, and you can stroll down Stephen Avenue, where more than 30 film projects have used it to match locations including Denver, Santa Monica and New York, to name a few.
All the patios on the avenue are open on Stephen Avenue during the summer and there are great restaurants and a lot happening and there are art galleries, so it’s just a great place to wander.
Where to Relax Inside or Outside
Also downtown, and a few minutes walk from Stephen Avenue, is the Fairmont Palliser Hotel. Jesse James shot on location there, as well as Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. Most of the movie stars stay at the Palliser, so you have a drink in the Oak Room and enjoy yourself.
For relaxing outdoors, visit Bowness Park in the city’s north for a nice relaxing picnic. Neverland, the movie about Michael Jackson, shot there.