History
Grande Prairie is located just north of the 55th Parallel, and is 465 km (289 miles) northwest of Edmonton. The city of Grande Prairie lies at an elevation of 669 m (2195 ft) above sea level. The city is surrounded by farmland to the north, east and west. To the south, it is mostly a vast boreal forest with aspen, tamarack, lodgepole pine, jack pine, and black spruce extending well into the foothills of the Canadian Rockies south and southwest of the city.
Bear Creek goes through the city from the northwest to the south end and is a tributary of the Wapiti River to the south. The Bear Creek Reservoir is the small body of water by Grande Prairie Regional College in the northwest part of the city, and is ringed by marshy wetland. The terrain immediately surrounding Grande Prairie is largely flat to gently rolling, but rises gradually to hilly terrain closer to the foothills to the south and southwest. On clear days, some peaks in the Rockies are visible to the southwest from Grande Prairie.
The city lies on the southern edge of aspen parkland, which is a transitional biome between boreal forest and prairie. The Peace Country contains the northernmost area of aspen parkland in North America. However, much of the aspen parkland in the region has long since been altered by extensive farming and oil/gas drilling activity.

Geography
Grande Prairie has a northern continental climate typical of Alberta and northeastern BC. Winters are generally cold with some mild spells. Summers are often fairly cool to pleasantly warm in the daytime, but nights can be cool despite the long summer days typical for its latitude. Hot days over 30°C (86°F) are rare, occurring on average only one to two days a year, which is not unexpected this far north. Winter conditions can vary tremendously from year to year. Winters have been known to be mild enough to produce "brown Christmas" conditions, where little or no snow may fall until after Christmas due to unusually mild early winter conditions.
The average January temperature is -15°C (-9°C average high and -19°C average low) and the average July temperature is 15.9°C (22°C average high and 10°C average low). However, temperatures as low as -52°C and as high as 36°C have been recorded. Grande Prairie gets 317.7 mm (12.5") of rain and 158.6 cm (5'2") of snow per year on average. The total annual precipitation is 446.6 mm (17.6") which includes both rain and snow. Snowfall amounts, however, vary greatly from year to year. Being fairly close to the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, it can get quite windy in Grande Prairie, especially in the spring and fall. Chinooks are not an unheard of occurrence in the Grande Prairie area. Grande Prairie has 314 sunshine days per year on average.
Summers can bring thunderstorms, although they are not as frequent nor as severe as those further south in Central Alberta. Rainfall can vary from year to year, but the Peace Region is noted for never having experienced truly severe drought conditions more typical of Southern Alberta and Saskatchewan. Although a tornado struck the city on July 9, 2004, which was weak but still powerful enough to flip vehicles and do minor damage, it should be noted that tornadoes are rare but not unknown in the Peace Region. Damage was done to a number of buildings, including the Park and York Hotels, and minor damage to construction sites in the eastern portion of the city.
October 28, 2006, heralded a new record for the city: nearly 40 centimetres (15 inches ) of snow fell in a mere twenty-four hours. It was the greatest single-day snow fall in nearly fifty years.

Climate
Major industries include oil and gas, agriculture, forestry, services, and technology. Grande Prairie is one of the most economically diverse cities in Alberta outside Edmonton and Calgary.
Agriculture was the first economic mainstay of Grande Prairie since settlement began in the early 20th Century, and is still an essential part of the local economy today. A variety of crops such as barley, wheat, canola and oats is widely grown in the Peace region, as well as livestock such as cattle, and even buffalo (bison). Despite the latitude (north of 55°N), the climate is mild enough to allow for farming on a large scale to prosper. Daylight hours also tend to be quite long during the summer at this latitude, aiding in crop production. The Peace Region is the northernmost major farming region in North America, and land there is still being cleared for new farmland.
Although some oil and gas drilling has been ongoing in the South Peace since the 1950s, oil and gas exploration did not begin to occur on a large scale until the late 1970s. It was in the mid-1970s that the Elmworth gas field was discovered and exploited, causing the city to grow rapidly until the last oil boom ended in 1981.
Forestry is a major part of Grande Prairie's economy, for large tracts of forest lie to the south in the foothills and the Canadian Rockies. The Weyerhaeuser Canada kraft pulp mill is one of Grande Prairie's largest employers and was opened in 1972. It was originally owned by Procter & Gamble until it was sold to Weyerhaeuser Canada in 1992. Canfor runs a sawmill and lumber yard operation in the west side of the city. The Ainsworth OSB (Oriented Strand Board) plant opened in late 1995.
Grande Prairie serves as the economic and transportation hub for a trading area of nearly 250,000 people. Grande Prairie is also on the CANAMEX trade route linking Canada, the United States and Mexico.
Due to the fact that Alberta has no provincial sales tax and that Grande Prairie is fairly close to the Alberta-BC border, there is a high number of shoppers from British Columbia. Hence, it is not unusual to see a large number of vehicles with BC license plates in retail and mall parking lots in Grande Prairie.

Economy
Grande Prairie Airport (ICAO Code CYQU, IATA Code YQU) is located in the west end of the city and serves the region with regular flights to Calgary, Edmonton, Red Deer, Vancouver, and smaller communities. Three airlines offer service to Grande Prairie Regional Airport — Air Canada Jazz, WestJet, and Swanberg Air. The airport has seen extremely high growth in both passenger and aircraft traffic in recent years. The terminal, built in 1981, is currently being renovated with an expansion scheduled for as early as 2007.
The city operates a small public transit system with modern buses and an extensive and centralized route system throughout the city.
Greyhound Canada offers scheduled bus service to Grande Prairie from Edmonton and other communities in northwestern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia and Yukon Territory.
Highway 43 is the primary highway into the city from the north and from Edmonton. Highway 43 meets Highway 2 a few kilometers north of the city at an intersection known locally as Four Mile Corner, then continues south into the city via a northwest bypass and west to the Alberta/BC border.
The stretch of Highway 2 extending north from Grande Prairie to Four Mile Corner and west to the Alberta/BC border was renumbered to Highway 43 in the late 1990s to link with the rest of Highway 43 from Four Mile Corner to the Yellowhead Highway just west of Edmonton. (This explains why newer maps no longer show that stretch west and a few km north of the city as Highway 2) The renumbering was also partly due to Highway 43 now being a part of the CANAMEX trade route and also that it is being widened to a four-lane divided highway along its entire length. Highway 40 is the primary access road into Grande Prairie from the south.
Construction of a new Highway 43X bypass to go around the northwest side of the city from Four Mile Corner to Highway 43 just west of the airport has begun as of August, 2007 ("Four Mile Corner" is not an actual settlement - it is an intersection so-named because it is four miles north of the intersection of Clairmont Road (100th Street) and Richmond Avenue (100th Avenue)). The construction is in two phases, with the first phase under construction and the second currently in the design stage. The first phase extends west to Range Road 63 (116 Street within city limits), while the second phase runs west from Range Road 63 south to Highway 43 west of the airport. The future bypass is intended to replace the current one. The current bypass, which was built in the late 1960s, is no longer functioning well as one due to high traffic volumes and new intersections. The rapid population growth of Grande Prairie is contributing to such a high increase in vehicle traffic that traffic jams are now common during peak hours.
Grande Prairie sees many vacationers heading to the Alaska Highway by road during the summer because Highway 43 leads towards Dawson Creek, BC, which is the "Mile 0" of the Alaska Highway.
Grande Prairie's streets are usually numbered rather than named, with the exception of some major roadways. In fact, the street numbering system is modeled after that of Edmonton's.
The downtown core is centred at 100 Street (Clairmont Road) and 100 Avenue (Richmond Avenue). Streets run north-south, while avenues run east-west. The letter "A" is sometimes used if a street lies between two streets but doesn't correspond to the street numbering grid. For example, 100A Avenue would lie between 100 and 101 Avenues.
Houses and buildings with odd numbers are on the east side of a street or the south side of an avenue. Dropping the last two digits of a house number tells you what two streets or avenues the house lies between, for example 9835 101 Avenue is between 98 Street and 99 Street, and 11610 91 Street is between 116 Avenue and 117 Avenue.

Transportation
In 2006, according to the Canada 2006 Census, Grande Prairie had a population of 47,076 living in 17,941 dwellings, a 27.3% increase from 2001. The city has a land area of 61.08 km² (23.6 sq mi) and a population density of 770.7/km² (1,996.1/sq mi).

Demographics
Grande Prairie Regional College (GPRC), established in 1966, is the primary post-secondary institution in the city and offers degrees in a few programs. The present college campus was built in 1974 and expanded later in the early 1990s. Its unique architecture was originally designed by the renowned Canadian architect Douglas Cardinal.
The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology (NAIT) has plans to build a new campus in Grande Prairie on the southeast corner of 68 Avenue and Wapiti Road (Highway 40) in the near future. NAIT currently offers some programs through GPRC.
Grande Prairie Regional College recently adopted the Dean-system of administration. It's largest faculty, Arts and Education, is currently headed by Dr. Scott McAlpine. As of Jan. 2007, the college is administered by Doug Hart, following the resignation of former institution President Jim Henderson.
Grande Prairie has two public high schools. Grande Prairie Composite High School serves City of Grande Prairie high school students, and Peace Wapiti Academy serves high school students of the surrounding County of Grande Prairie. It also has ten elementary/junior high public schools for Grades K-9, some of which have programs for special needs students. There is also the Bridge Network, a school specially geared for students who cannot or will not attend the traditional high school education system due to various problems. Grande Prairie has 11 Catholic schools, one of which is St. Joseph's High School. Grande Prairie also has 3 Christian Schools including Grande Prairie Christian School located on the south west corner of the city.

Recreation and culture
As of November 15, 2006, the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) has approved three new radio stations for Grande Prairie. One is formatted with Classic Rock/Classic Hits, operated by Bear Creek Broadcasting, Ltd. with an FM frequency of 103.3 Megahertzs, the second is a Classic Rock-formatted station operated by Vista Radio Ltd. with an FM frequency of 104.7 MHz. The third is to be a Christian music radio station called Shine FM, with a frequency of 96.3 MHz. has recently been introduced.

FM 88.9: YL Country
AM 610: YL Country
FM 90.5: CHFA-FM-5 (La Première Chaîne)
FM 93.1: CJXX, "Big Country XX" (country)
FM 97.7: CFGP "Rock 97.7" (Formerly Sun FM) (Classic Rock)
FM 98.9: "Q99" (Rock)
FM 100.9: CKUA-FM-4 (variety)
FM 102.5: CBXP (CBC Radio One)
FM 104.7: "104.7 Free FM" (Rock, Country)