Big Valley Real Estate

Living in Big Valley

The 1912 CNR railway station in Big Valley is, by wide consensus, the best-preserved original railway station remaining in Alberta. Walking into the waiting room is the kind of experience that stops people mid-sentence — the ticket window, the stationmaster's office, the waiting benches — it's as close to 1915 as you'll get in this province without a time machine. The village grew around that station when the Canadian National line came through, flourished as a regional service point, and then contracted as the railway's importance to prairie life diminished. The population today is a fraction of what it was at peak. But Big Valley is not a ghost town — it's a living community that carries a genuinely extraordinary piece of built heritage right in its centre.

The village sits in a coulée — the same kind of shallow, eroded valley that becomes more dramatic the further south and east you travel toward Drumheller. The Red Deer River watershed cuts through Kneehill County, providing the topographical variety that open-prairie towns lack. Mule deer are in the coulées; whitetail deer are in the windbreaks; upland birds are in the stubble fields. The light in a coulée at evening is something that prairie people who grew up in the flat country sometimes never quite get over. Average home prices around $120,000 are among the lowest of any incorporated Alberta village — for buyers who want to own something outright without spending a decade saving, Big Valley is one of the province's most honest deals.

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Specialty Properties