This year marks the 40th annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival. It is also the first year of the second century for the province of Alberta, which celebrated its centennial in 2005. Named after Queen Victoria's fourth daughter, Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, but familiarly called "Wild Rose Country" by its 3.26 million residents, Alberta is a land of contrasts. Its landscape is among the most diverse in North America, with badlands, prairies, boreal forests, rolling foothills, enormous freshwater lakes such as the Athabasca, and mighty rivers including the Peace and the North Saskatchewan. Its western border is defined by the spectacular ranges of the Rocky Mountains; its eastern border by the Great Plains. Alberta is enormous: it stretches 764 miles from the U.S. border (where it meets the state of Montana) to the Northwest Territories, and 412 miles east to west from Saskatchewan to British Columbia. With a total area of 255,213 square miles, Alberta is exceeded in size by only two of the United States, Texas and Alaska.