Dinosaur themed climbing structure at Meadowview Dinosaur Playground
Scavanger hunt at Meadowview Dinosaur Playground

Meadowview Dinosaur Playground

The dinosaur was real, and it was found right here.

In 2013, a crew installing a storm drain in a new Leduc subdivision hit something odd. A worker named Ryan Eschak spotted vertebrae half-buried in the dirt and stopped the dig. What came out of that hole was a complete hadrosaur — a duck-billed dinosaur, roughly 68 million years old — and the first ever collected in this area with skin impressions still preserved. The Royal Tyrrell Museum called it something special from the first photographs.

The land was supposed to become houses. Leduc built a playground on the spot instead, worked with the Royal Tyrrell on the design, and opened it in the summer of 2015. That story is the reason this park is worth the drive from Edmonton: your kids aren't playing on a dinosaur theme, they're playing on the exact ground where a dinosaur came out.

And the build lives up to it. A great carved tree anchors the main structure — dinosaurs worked into the trunk, a spiral staircase winding up the inside to platforms, bridges and the biggest slides. Climbing walls and tunnels are shaped like boulders. Dinosaurs perch on the tops of posts. Then there's the digging pit, where kids uncover fossil bones buried in the sand, which is exactly what happened here for real.

Playground Features

  • Unique, immersive dinosaur theme

  • Scavenger hunt though the playground

  • Separate toddler structure — a scaled-down version of the main one

  • Rope bridge with multiple climbing routes

  • Hidden dinosaur fossils children can ‘excavate’

  • Spinning egg chair

Practical Information

  • This is a fun, immersive playground, but on the smaller side - pair it with a visit to the Pirate playground, also in Leduc.

  • This playground can be tricky to find: Aim for Meadowview Boulevard, west of C.W. Gaetz Road, and look for the pathway in - Look for the playground.

  • Location: Morris Ave (Leduc)

  • It's a strong hour or two, not a full day. If you're driving from Edmonton, pair it with something else in Leduc — the Leduc Recreation Centre is minutes away, and Meadowview has about 2 km of paved pathways if you bring bikes or scooters.

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