Waterton Lakes National Park is a national park located in the southwest corner of Alberta, Canada, and borders Glacier National Park inMontana, USA. Waterton was Canada's fourth national park, formed in 1895 and named after Waterton Lake, in turn after the Victorian naturalist and conservationist Charles Waterton. The park contains 505 km2 (195 sq mi) of rugged mountains and wilderness.
Operated by Parks Canada, Waterton is open all year, but the main tourist season is during July and August. The only commercial facilities available within the park are located at the Waterton Park townsite. The park ranges in elevation from 1,290 metres (4,232 ft) at the townsite to 2,910 m (9,547 ft) at Mount Blakiston. It offers many scenic trails, including Crypt Lake trail. In 2011/2012, Waterton Lakes National Park had 400,520 visitors.[1]
The park was the subject of a short film in 2011's National Parks Project, directed by Peter Lynch and scored by Cadence Weapon, Laura Barrett and Mark Hamilton.
American TV talkshow host David Letterman recommended the park on the Monday, 24 June 2013 episode of his nightly show. In an interview with Melissa McCarthy he told her, “when you go to Montana, you gotta' go North to Glacier ... and then dip-up into Waterton International Peace Park, it’s the Canadian part of Glacier National Park. It’s stunning.” The quotation was covered by several Canadian news outlets.
In 1932, Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park was formed from Waterton and Glacier. It was dedicated to world peace by Sir Charles Arthur Mander on behalf of Rotary International. Although the park has a lot of diversity for its size, the main highlight is the Waterton lakes—the deepest in the Canadian Rockies—overlooked by the historic Prince of Wales Hotel National Historic Site.