Alberta · Civic arena
High River drinking water hardness is 165 mg/L on OpenStats, plus City Score rankings and local readings.
Civic arena · hometown HUD
#338 of 343
36% City Score XP
5/8 pillars on the board
Decade trail
High River packs 5 of eight open-data pillars into its composite standing. Tap a rival below to see how the hometown stacks up head-to-head.
Rivalries on deck
Hardness, pH, and lead from municipal reports on the OpenStats water atlas. This page uses a regional estimate — open the water atlas for method notes.
Full High River water quality report →City Score rankingsCompare cities · vs Olds · vs Lloydminster (Part)Hardness guide
Watershed to tap · system map
Source, treatment, and distribution for High River from municipal and provincial water records. Open the animated map for the full watershed-to-tap diagram — no nested topic navigation here.
Permits, tax, internet, radon, hazards, drinking water, and sports rankings where a CHL hometown applies.
High River sits at City Score rank #338 with a standing of 36%, from 5 of 8 open-data pillars (tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, growth, safety). Missing pillars score at median standing so thin coverage cannot inflate the rank. Dropping 42 places versus 2022 (#296 → #338).
Latest owned placements: indoor radon rank #65 of 327 at 135 Bq/m³ survey mean. Full tables and method notes live on each study edition; atlas readings for the same slug open from the topic buttons.
Against the national corpus, High River carries a City Score standing of 36% (rank #338 of 343) with 5 of 8 pillars observed. That sits 14 points below the Alberta peer average across 51 ranked cities. Within Alberta, High River ranks #51 of 51 on City Score.
The strongest signal in the current chart is drinking-water hardness (standing 50%, rank #173 of 343, raw score 165). The weakest observed pillar is population growth (standing 17%, rank #284 of 343).
Drinking-water hardness on the water atlas reads 165 mg/L as CaCO₃ for High River. Compare that figure to the hardness pillar on the chart and to the national hardness guide on the hub.
Arena loadout
Arena rank #338 of 343
5/8 pillars · main XP bar
Pillar avg · hardness #173
No placement
Rank #279
Rank #65
Rank #148
No placement
High River pillar standing
Eight equal-weight City Score pillars, 2025 panel year.
Source: OpenStats composite / study editions
City Score standing trend
Standing percentage by panel year (higher is better).
Years: 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
Source: OpenStats composite timeseries
Achievements
Published residential mill-rate context for High River.
Main indoor recreation hub with large and practice arenas, Cargill Field House, Highwood Curling Club ice, and an aquatics expansion
Heavily treed park beside downtown with playground, stage, picnic areas, and a seasonal Lions campground. Christmas light displays draw
George Lane Memorial Park is named for a Calgary Stampede founder and High River resident; the Lions Club runs the campground.
Where High River sits in published building-permit figures for July 2026.
Older hometown notes stay on the desk archive (noindex) — this section shows recent highlights only.
High River sits in the southern Alberta foothills, where municipal copy still says prairies meet the mountains and the Highwood River runs through town. Happy Trails stitch more than 19 kilometres of paved walking and cycling paths along the river and through greenspace, the route people use to get to parks without driving. George Lane Memorial Park sits next to downtown with a stage, playground, picnic tables, and a Lions-run campground that fills in summer. Frank Lake, about 12 kilometres east, is the birding stop on the visitor list.
Indoor life centres on the Bob Snodgrass Recreational Complex. Two ice surfaces, the Cargill Field House with its walking track, and the Highwood Curling Club share the building. The pool is closed while the facility expansion finishes, so summer cool-downs lean on the High River Spray Park and the outdoor calendar. Little Bow Park sits behind the complex for group bookings and play space. The High River Times keeps a Foothills desk on community news while Town Hall pushes parks stewardship and land-use talk.
Living on the Highwood also means flood readiness. Since 2013 the town has built kilometres of dikes and installed the Centre Street Bridge Flood Gate to protect downtown. That work is part of how locals talk about the river, alongside Happy Trails, spray-park afternoons, and mountain day trips via the Cowboy Trail toward Kananaskis. Skatepark redesign talk and parks stewardship show up on the same civic calendar. On OpenStats City Score for 2025, High River sits at rank 339 of 343. The hometown framing stays foothills, river, and Happy Trails first.
Drawn from Town of High River - About, Town of High River - Happy Trails, Town of High River - George Lane Memorial Park, Town of High River - Flood Preparedness, High River Times.
City Score from 2016–2025 across eight open-data pillars. Individual study placements are listed in the panels below.
Each study below is its own ranking. Where a study has more than one edition for this city, the chart shows standing across those years only.
Safety · OpenStats
Statistics Canada does not publish a police-service Crime Severity Index that OpenStats can match to High River without copying a province, CMA, or another city. The safety pillar scores at median standing (50%) on City Score, the same rule used for other missing pillars.
Connectivity · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by household-weighted maximum advertised download (Mbps) from ISED National Broadband Data hex ISP rows, with hex-to-city assignment by population-weighted gravity. The headline 2025 score is the dwelling-weighted mean of per-hex technology ceilings (fibre and cable at 1 Gbps, DSL lower). Household-weighted 50/10 availability (%) is stored on atlas rows as avail_5010_pct. Earlier panel years backcast along a national speed curve with city-specific fiber and availability paths.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Composite · OpenStats
OpenStats
Dimensional average of OpenStats open-data pillars for each panel year 2016-2025: tax, construction, connectivity, indoor air, water, seismic hazard, population growth, and crime severity. Each series is scored 0-1 within its edition; series in the same pillar are averaged, then all eight pillars are averaged with equal weight. Missing pillars score at median standing (0.5). Crime severity uses StatCan police-service CSI only (Tables 35-10-0026-01 and 35-10-0063-01); cities without a police-service match take median standing on the safety pillar. Growth uses StatCan CSD estimates; construction uses verified municipal building-permit value per resident (population field on each city record, 2021 Census vintage); mill rates and broadband use live rows plus documented year-varying estimates where needed. Radon, water, and PGA may be survey/model vintages carried forward and are flagged when static for more than two years. External commercial livability lists are never inputs.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Water · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by municipal drinking-water hardness (mg/L as CaCO₃). Hardness changes slowly; the atlas vintage is carried across panel years and flagged when static for more than two years.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Water · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by reported lead (µg/L) on the OpenStats water atlas. Carried across panel years until annual municipal report panels are ingested.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Health · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by Health Canada survey mean indoor radon (Bq/m³). Rank 1 is the highest mean. Decade panel years without a new survey carry the CMA survey vintage forward; they are not annual retests.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Growth · OpenStats
OpenStats
Cities ranked by year-over-year population growth from Statistics Canada annual CSD estimates (Table 17-10-0155-01). Rank 1 is fastest growth. A few places without a clean CSD match use a provincial-path estimate anchored to seed population.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Hazards · OpenStats
OpenStats
Communities ranked by NRCan peak ground acceleration (higher = stronger shaking hazard). Rank 1 is highest PGA. The seismic model is multi-year; values are carried across the City Score panel and flagged as static until NRCan publishes a new generation.
10 editions · 2016–2025
Livability
MoneySense
Annual composite ranking of Canadian municipalities on economy, housing, crime, health, and weather.
4 editions · 2014–2018
Distinctive local notes and places, each linked to its source.
Happy Trails offer over 19 km of paved pathways connecting parks and recreation sites along the Highwood River.
George Lane Memorial Park is named for a Calgary Stampede founder and High River resident; the Lions Club runs the campground.
The Centre Street Bridge Flood Gate is part of a post-2013 system that includes more than seven kilometres of engineered dikes.
The Cargill Field House inside Bob Snodgrass Recreational Complex covers more than 33,000 square feet with a two-lane walking track.
Town-wide paved pathway system along the Highwood River and through parks. Built for walkers, strollers, cyclists, and other non-motorized users as a daily transport and recreation spine.
Heavily treed park beside downtown with playground, stage, picnic areas, and a seasonal Lions campground. Christmas light displays draw winter visitors.
Main indoor recreation hub with large and practice arenas, Cargill Field House, Highwood Curling Club ice, and an aquatics expansion underway.
Birding and photography stop about 12 km east of High River on the municipal visitor list, paired with Happy Trails for a nature day out of town.
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