Calgary and Edmonton Trail

The Calgary and Edmonton Trail was a land transport route between Fort Edmonton and Fort Calgary in the Northwest Territories.

Prior to European contact, there was already a route through the area that local Indigenous peoples used to travel between the Shortgrass Prairies in the south to the Aspen Parkland in the north. This was reportedly a link in the Great North Trail (AKA Old North Trail) that stretched from Mexico to the Barren Lands, a western equivalent to the Great Trail along the eastern seaboard.

After the fur trade post Fort Edmonton was established near the site of today's Fort Saskatchewan near to today's City of Edmonton, pre-existing Native trails became part of the massive fur-trading transportation network that European and Canadian companies used to export furs from the interior to the coasts and on to Europe. David Thompson traveled the northern portion of trail to Fort Edmonton in 1800. John McDougall blazed a more modern trail running south of Edmonton as far as Morley in 1873. It was extended to Calgary two years later. Development of the trail allowed mail service between Calgary and a southside location near to Edmonton in 1891.