Medicine Hat's downtown is a compact grid of brick and stone commercial buildings stepping back from the South Saskatchewan River. Boom-era prosperity from natural gas and the CPR meant that, between roughly 1905 and 1920, the city built itself a downtown that is unusually well preserved by Western Canadian standards: the streets still read as a coherent piece of Edwardian planning.
The walking route along Second and Third Streets takes in the old City Hall, the Monarch Theatre, the Cypress Hotel, and a string of small commercial blocks now occupied by cafés, restaurants and independent shops. The Heritage Walking Tour brochure (free at the Esplanade) is worth picking up; it covers about thirty buildings in a couple of kilometres.