Edworthy Park is a city park located in the southwest section of Calgary along the south shore of the Bow River

Bow River

The Bow River is a river in the Canadian province of Alberta. It is a tributary of the South Saskatchewan River, and is considered the headwater of the Nelson River....

. The Canadian Pacific Railway

Canadian Pacific Railway

The Canadian Pacific Railway , formerly also known as CP Rail between 1968 and 1996, is a historic Canadian Class I railway founded in 1881 and now operated by Canadian Pacific Railway Limited, which began operations as legal owner in a corporate restructuring in 2001...

 crosses the length of the park.

The park has a surface of 1.27 square kilometre (0.490349741412519 sq mi), and contains over 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) of hiking and biking trails, part of the Bow River pathway

Bow River pathway

The Bow River pathway is a pathway system developed along the banks of the Bow River in the city of Calgary. It contains a network of pedestrian and bicycle paths connecting parks on both sides of the river....

.

Nature

The trees that can be found in Edworthy Park include riparian woodland

Woodland

Ecologically, a woodland is a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade. Woodlands may support an understory of shrubs and herbaceous plants including grasses. Woodland may form a transition to shrubland under drier conditions or during early stages of...

 with aspen

Aspen

Populus section Populus, of the Populus genus, includes the aspen trees and the white poplar Populus alba. The five typical aspens are all native to cold regions with cool summers, in the north of the Northern Hemisphere, extending south at high altitudes in the mountains. The White Poplar, by...

, willow

Willow

Willows, sallows, and osiers form the genus Salix, around 400 species of deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist soils in cold and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere...

 and balsam poplar

Balsam poplar

The balsam poplars — also known as Populus sect. Tacamahaca — are a group of about 10 species of poplars, indigenous to North America and eastern Asia, distinguished by the balsam scent of their buds, the whitish undersides of their leaves, and the leaf petiole being round in cross-section...

. There is also some grassland and mixed shrubland, and an escarpment where white spruce

White Spruce

Picea glauca is a species of spruce native to boreal forests in the north of North America, from central Alaska east to Newfoundland, and south to northern Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, upstate New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine; there is also an isolated population in the...

 dominates. Within the spruce is an isolated population of Douglas-fir

Douglas-fir

Douglas-fir is one of the English common names for evergreen coniferous trees of the genus Pseudotsuga in the family Pinaceae. Other common names include Douglas tree, and Oregon pine. There are five species, two in western North America, one in Mexico, and two in eastern Asia...

, some more than 400 years old.

Freeway plans

Prior to the mid-1990s, the City of Calgary had always intended Edworthy Park to be a temporary park, which would eventually be replaced by an extension of the Shaganappi Trail freeway which would hook up with Sarcee Trail and Bow Trail at a major interchange that would take up most of the park's southwest. During development of the Calgary Transportation Plan (a.k.a. The Go Plan) in 1995, public opposition to the roadway led to it being removed from future consideration.

External links

• City of Calgary - Edworthy Park