Sylvan Lake

Sylvan Lake is a town in central Alberta, Canada. It is situated 25 kilometres or 16 miles west of Red Deer City along Highway 11A or Highway 11. It is located on the southeast edge of Sylvan Lake, a 15 kilometre or 9.3 mile long freshwater lake, in Red Deer County.

The lake is a tourist location for individuals all around the province, bringing in roughly 1.5 million tourists each year. Famous tourist activities consist of swimming, sunbathing, water-skiing, and visiting the local Wild Rapids Waterslides.

The area was first inhabited by French speaking immigrants from the US and Quebec. Arriving in 1898 from the state of Michigan, Alexandre Loiselle together with his family first homesteaded the quarter section that afterward became the west side of the present Main (50th) Street and the businesses and homes directly to the west.

The early twentieth century saw groups of Estonian and then Finnish settlers moving to homesteads toward the south and west of the fledgling settlement at the town of Sylvan Lake. With their arrival came the early business community, a general store, a hardware store, a blacksmith, barber, restaurants, post office and a lot more. The completion of the Canadian Northern line to Rocky Mountain House and Nordegg in the year 1912 and the parallel Canadian Pacific during 1914 opened the west country to settlement and led to the incorporation of Sylvan Lake during 1913 under a local hardware store owner, Mayor E.S. Grimson. The anniversary of the founding of the town of Sylvan Lake is celebrated each year in the town of Sylvan Lake as "1913 Days."

At present the town of Sylvan Lake is a booming community seeing much development in the past decade, while being considered one of Canada's Top Ten Resort Hot Spots. No longer believed to be a seasonal community, 86 per cent of houses are permanent household, based on the 2006 federal census.

Sylvan Lake has been rated as the fastest growing rural community in the nation by Statistics Canada, in addition to one of Canada's youngest communities. Over the past five years the city has seen yearly growth rates of up to 20%. At present 70% of the town's population comprises people between the ages of 1 - 44 years.

In the year 2006, the ARP or Waterfront Area Redevelopment Plan was created in order to promote new development and growth of the downtown and waterfront areas. This plan offered needed direction and identifies opportunities of growth, with intensification and efficient use of land with improved lake access. Implementation of the plan has led to amendments to regulations in order to provide flexible zoning in order to attain the desired vision.