Horse Country · South of Calgary · The Cowboy Trail
Cross Calgary's southern limit and the land starts practising for the Rockies — this is the region's horse country, where about 131 active acreage listings roll between Heritage Pointe's manicured lake and the ranch gates of the Cowboy Trail. Median detached ask: around $1.99 million. Hay not included, but frequently nearby.
Browse by community
Foothills County runs the full acreage spectrum in one jurisdiction — a piped, golf-wrapped hamlet at the top of the map, equestrian strongholds in the middle, and honest ranch country as you ride the Cowboy Trail south. Pick your community by what you want out the window: fairways, paddocks or the whole front range.
The county's polished front porch — a master-planned hamlet wrapped around a 27-hole golf club, with a private lake, piped utilities and around 14 active listings averaging $2.06 million. It's acreage-country geography with city-style plumbing, and there's nothing else like it between Calgary and the mountains.
~14 actives · averaging $2.06M
Explore Heritage Pointe →The county's top commuter zone — the Dunbow Road corridor puts these parcels minutes from Calgary's Deerfoot and Macleod arteries, so De Winton owners get country mornings without surrendering the downtown paycheque. Popular enough that good listings rarely linger past the second weekend.
Commuter-premium acreage pricing
Explore De Winton →The equestrian heartland, where gymkhana nights at the community hall are a social calendar fixture and half the driveways end at a horse trailer. Priddis Greens adds a 36-hole golf counterweight for the residents who prefer their turf mowed rather than grazed.
Foothills-west equestrian pricing
Explore Priddis →Home of a racetrack that's been running since 1905 and a Saturday farmers' market that empties half of south Calgary's kitchens. Millarville's acreage crown jewel is Square Butte, a gated ranch community where the amenity is the land itself — hundreds of shared acres of it.
Ranch-country character pricing
Explore Millarville →The acreage ring around Okotoks, anchored by Green Haven — a Built Green community that proves environmental certification and country lots can share a fence line. You get the parcel, plus a full-sized town's worth of rinks, schools and grocery runs five minutes away.
Town-adjacent acreage value
Explore Okotoks Rural →The artsy base camp on the Sheep River, where galleries and coffee roasters share the street with feed stores. The acreage market here is genuinely unplatted country — no named subdivisions, just individual parcels scattered through the river valley, each one its own story.
Valley parcels, priced one by one
Explore Diamond Valley →The county's southern acreage country around High River, headlined by Silver Tip Ranch's estate parcels. One local homework assignment comes with the territory: the Highwood has flooded before, so flood-plain mapping and overland coverage belong in your due-diligence file, not your afterthoughts.
Southern-county value pricing
Explore High River Rural →Buying notes
Foothills County draws its livestock line at three acres. Below it, a Country Residential parcel is pets-only territory; at three acres and above, the county generally allows up to three animal units — think three horse-equivalents — as of right. It sounds like a technicality until you've watched a buyer discover that their dream 2.4-acre property can't legally board the horse that inspired the whole move. Measure the dream against the parcel before you write.
Most residential acreages here carry one of two designations: CR (Country Residential), the county's classic standalone-acreage district, or CRS, the variant applied to the tighter, more subdivision-style clusters. The practical differences show up in what you can do with the land — animal allowances, outbuilding expectations and setbacks can all shift between the two. Same county, same scenery, different rulebooks; confirm which set applies to your parcel before you plan the shop or the paddock.
Under Land Use Bylaw 60/2014, a parcel below 80 acres generally supports one dwelling plus a secondary suite — and that's the ceiling. The multi-generational plan with a second full home for the in-laws needs either a much bigger land base or a development approval you shouldn't assume you'll get. If the listing photos show two houses on forty acres, your first question is how the second one got there and whether the paperwork agrees.
Highway 22 earns its nickname and its premium at the same time. The county's best mountain-view corridor tracks that road — Priddis to Millarville and south — where the terrain lifts and the front range does its full theatrical run across the horizon. Comparable acreage a few range roads east, with prairie sightlines instead of peaks, trades meaningfully cheaper. Decide early whether you're buying the view or the value, because in Foothills County they live at different addresses.
Water in this county is a do-it-yourself utility: private wells and septic fields serve nearly every acreage, which makes flow-rate tests and septic inspections standard offer conditions rather than nice-to-haves. The outlier is Heritage Pointe, where piped water and wastewater run to every lot — a genuine rarity that partly explains why its market behaves more like an estate suburb than the rest of the county's well-and-tank country.
Good questions
How many acres do I need to keep horses in Foothills County?
Three acres is the county's magic number. On a Country Residential parcel of three acres or more, Foothills County generally permits up to three animal units — roughly three horse-equivalents — without any special approval, while parcels below that threshold are limited to household pets. If a horse is part of the plan, filter your search at three acres and up before you fall for a two-acre listing with a perfect barn.
Do Foothills County acreages have municipal water and sewer?
Almost never — private wells and septic systems are the standard arrangement across the county, so well flow tests, water potability results and septic inspections belong in every offer. The one big exception is Heritage Pointe, a master-planned hamlet near Calgary's south edge that runs on piped water and wastewater utilities, giving it a city-style service package that no other Foothills acreage community can match.
Where are the best mountain views in Foothills County?
The corridor along Highway 22 — the Cowboy Trail — is the county's front-row seat. From Priddis down through Millarville toward Diamond Valley, the land climbs into genuine foothills and the Rockies fill the western windows, which is exactly why parcels along that band command a premium over otherwise similar land further east. As a rule of thumb in Foothills County, every kilometre west adds scenery and subtracts nothing but your budget.
