It was a record breaking year for the Bar U Ranch National Historic Site.

The Bar U welcomed over 32,000 visitors in 2017. This is partially attributed to the Canada 150 parks passes where people were granted free admission into national parks and historic sites.

Mike McLean, Special Projects Manager for the Bar U, says while a majority of their visitors came from Canada they also had quite an international following.

"We're followed closely by our neighbour to the south, the United States, and other areas by proportion we would go United Kingdom, Europe, France, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Asia, China, Japan, The Czech Republic, India, and South Korea."

A highlight for McLean from the season was honouring hometown heroes.

"We had the Strathcona Mounted Troop down a couple of times this year, at the beginning of the season we had the historical vehicles troop down and people could get a ride in an armoured personnel carrier on tracks and they were in their vintage World War I uniforms so that was really interesting."

Currently the Bar U is in the development stages for events in 2018.