Riding Mountain National Park is a national park in Manitoba, Canada. The park sits atop the Manitoba Escarpment. Consisting of a protected area 2,969 km2 (1,146 sq mi), the forested parkland stands in sharp contrast to the surrounding prairie farmland. It was designated a National Park because it protects three different ecosystems that converge in the area; grasslands, upland boreal and eastern deciduous forests. The park is home to wolves, moose, elk, black bears, hundreds of bird species, countless insects and a captive bison herd. It is most easily reached by Highway 10 which passes through the park. The south entrance is at the townsite of Wasagaming, which is the only commercial centre within the park boundaries.
The park was first protected in 1929 and had much of its public infrastructure created during the 1930s by labourers participating in Canada's great depression relief programs. Much of this early construction survives to this day. During World War II it was home to a prisoner of war camp which has since been dismantled. In 1986, Riding Mountain was designated a biosphere reserve by UNESCO.
Read more about Riding Mountain National Park: Park Access, Wildlife, Activities, Grey Owl, 75th Anniversary, Photo Gallery
Famous quotes containing the words riding, mountain, national and/or park:
“Sometimes a musical phrase would perfectly sum up
The mood of a moment. One of those lovelorn sonatas
For wind instruments was riding past on a solemn white horse.
Everybody wondered who the new arrival was.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
““Five o’clock tea” is a phrase our “rude forefathers,” even of the last generation, would scarcely have understood, so completely is it a thing of to-day; and yet, so rapid is the March of the Mind, it has already risen into a national institution, and rivals, in its universal application to all ranks and ages, and as a specific for “all the ills that flesh is heir to,” the glorious Magna Charta.”
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Borrow a child and get on welfare.
Borrow a child and stay in the house all day with the child,
or go to the public park with the child, and take the child
to the welfare office and cry and say your man left you and
be humble and wear your dress and your smile, and don’t talk
back ...”
—Susan Griffin (b. 1943)