High River has a long and rich tradition when it comes to the movies.

That tradition is on display at the Museum of the Highwood.

Curator Irene Kerr says it dates back to 1919 when the Prince of Wales was on a cross Canada tour and stopped in High River and the whole town turned out to welcome him with a big celebration and even a band. She says he got off the train and planted a tree and that was filmed by news reel crews travelling with him.

She says there are still some snippets of the film left.

"After that Guy Weadick same on the scene and through his connections travelling through the states and meeting some Hollywood stars and having an interest in promotion and movies he met Hoot Gibson, who was a famous cowboy star," she says. "He filmed a movie here in 1925 called the Calgary Stampede, and it was filmed out on Guy Weadick's ranch, north of Longview and in Calgary at the Stampede and at the rail station around High River and the area."

She says a documentary filmmaker named W.J. Oliver from Calgary came to High River and did a film with Capt. A.J. Carter who can be seen in a mural on the Telus building coming down in a parachute. Kerr says Oliver went up in the plane with Oliver and strapped a camera to his knee and filmed Carter jumping out of the plane and descending. Unfortunately the film no longer exists.

She says the idea for the exhibit came from the television show Heartland because it seemed every second visitor to the Museum wanted to know more more about it after visiting Maggie's Diner.

"High river, we're moving forward, but we have such a strong foundation and we have an amazing history here," Kerr says. "It's so much fun and so fascinating and it's really fun to be able to share these things and and people come in and they can relate to things, like they remember going to the Wales theatre on their first date, and they remember being an extra in Caitlin's Way and I have a lot of people who say they were in a lot of these movies and the big one of course was Superman 3, I think everyone in town was in Superman 3."