 Nestled on a mountain plateau just 214 km from Jasper National Park, Grande Cache is famous for their sparkling lakes, rivers, green valleys and mountain peeks. The Bighorn Highway 40 provides a paved corridor connecting Hinton, Alberta with Mile Zero of the Alaskan Highway at Dawson Creek, British Columbia. This is the shortest, most scenic route to Alaska from the United States.Grande Cache is the gateway to Willmore Wilderness Park, known for their hiking trails, alpine flowers, big game and many waterways. There are no motorized vehicles allowed in this park to preserve nature, but hiking and horseback riding keep visitors from all over the world wanting to return.
A background of unusual firsts makes the history of this southern Alberta town unique. The town is home to the Bassano Dam, once known as the most important structure of it’s kind in the world. Today, it is the second largest dam of it’s kind, exceeded in size only by one in Egypt that holds back the Nile. Bassano was home to the first canine training centre of the RCMP, and the first flying doctor flew from Bassano. The community was named by the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1884 for one of their major shareholders, the Marquis de Bassano, a native of Italy.
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