Cypress Hills Provincial Park, provincial park in Alberta
Cypress Hills Provincial Park covers about 400 square kilometres of the Cypress Hills plateau in southeastern Alberta, centred on Elkwater and Elkwater Lake. The park protects fescue grasslands, aspen and lodgepole pine stands, and wetlands, with the 1,468-metre highest point between the Rockies and Labrador rising above the surrounding prairie.
The park was established in 1951 as a provincial protected area in Alberta. In 1989, Alberta and Saskatchewan created a joint management agreement, making it one of Canada's first interprovincial parks with coordinated conservation efforts.
The Cypress Hills area lies within the traditional territory of the Nekaneet Cree, who signed Treaty 4 in 1874 and hold a reserve about 40 kilometres east of the park near Maple Creek. Their round dances and powwows continue in the region, and Nekaneet members have worked with park managers on cultural and heritage matters.
The park provides camping areas, hiking trails, and water activities on Elkwater Lake including boating and fishing. Winter visitors can enjoy cross-country skiing and snowshoeing throughout the protected landscape.
Cypress Hills sits on a plateau that escaped the last glaciation, so some plants and animals here are relics found nowhere else in the surrounding prairie. The park's highest summit, at 1,468 metres, is the highest land in Canada between the Rocky Mountains and Labrador.
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