The Red Deer River carved the Drumheller Valley over 13,000 years, exposing sediment layers that held dinosaur bones since the Late Cretaceous. In 1884, geologist Joseph Tyrrell discovered an Albertosaurus skull in a coal seam 12 kilometres from what is now the town centre, triggering a fossil rush that drew paleontologists from Berlin, Ottawa, and New York. By 1912, Barnum Brown had shipped 36 tonnes of specimens to the American Museum of Natural History. The valley's name honors Samuel Drumheller, a coal entrepreneur who arrived in 1910 and established the rail link that transformed a cluster of homesteads into a mining hub employing 2,000 workers by 1930. Today the Royal Tyrrell Museum anchors a calgary to drumheller day trip, holding 160,000 catalogued fossils and the world's largest display of complete dinosaur skeletons. The institution opened in 1985 on North Dinosaur Trail, eight kilometres northwest of town, and operates as a research centre under the Government of Alberta. Its 10 galleries span 4.5 billion years, with the Cretaceous Alberta hall reconstructing a swamp ecosystem lit by fibre-optic stars. The Devonian Reef diorama recreates a 375-million-year-old marine shelf using 750 fossil casts. Field crews still excavate sites along the Milk River and Manyberries coulees, bringing 600 new specimens into the collection each year. The badlands topography defines every Calgary to Drumheller excursion. Wind and frost fracture the bentonite clay into hoodoos — columns capped by erosion-resistant sandstone. The formations cluster densest along Highway 10X east of town, where a two-kilometre interpretive loop passes pillars five to seven metres tall. Bleriot Ferry, operating since 1913, remains Alberta's last cable ferry, crossing the Red Deer River every 15 minutes from May to October. The Horsethief Canyon viewpoint, 17 kilometres southwest on Highway 838, overlooks layered mudstone ravines 120 metres deep, tinted rust and grey by iron oxide and organic carbon. No guardrails separate the viewing platform from the canyon edge. A network of gravel roads threads through ranchland where Centrosaurus bone beds surface in coulee walls, accessible only with a research permit. The town itself holds 32 murals depicting Mesozoic fauna, commissioned in 1998 to mark the Tyrrell Museum's expansion. August temperatures reach 29°C, with July averaging 16 days above 25°C, making spring and autumn the preferred seasons for most visitors booking a Drumheller badlands tour from Calgary.