JASPER NATIONAL PARK - Canadian Rockies: Including Banff and Jasper National Parks - page 323

the present town. Other trading posts were built along the Athabasca River, including one
that became known as Jasper House, for the clerk Jasper Haws. This particular post was
first established in 1813, then moved to the shore of Jasper Lake in 1829.
By 1865, with the fur trade over and the Cariboo goldfields emptying along routes easi-
er than passing through what is now Jasper National Park, the Athabasca River Valley
had very few permanent residents. One settler was Lewis Swift, who in 1892 made his
home in the abandoned buildings of Jasper House, farming a small plot of land beside the
Athabasca River. “Old Swift” became known to everyone, providing fresh food and ac-
commodations for travelers and generating many legendary tales, such as the day he held
the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway at gunpoint until they agreed to reroute the line away
from his property.
In 1907, aware that the coming of the railway would mean an influx of settlers, the fed-
eral government set aside 5,000 square miles as Jasper Forest Park, buying all the land,
save for the parcel owned by Lewis Swift. A handful of Metis homesteaders continued to
live in the valley, but the land on which they lived was leased. The threat of oversettlement
of the valley had been abated, but as a designated forest park, mining and logging were
still allowed.
MARY SCHÄFFER
In the early 1900s, exploration of mountain wilderness areas was considered a
man's pursuit; however, one spirited and tenacious woman entered that domain and
went on to explore areas of the Canadian Rockies that no white man ever had.
Mary Sharples was born in 1861 in Pennsylvania and raised in a strict Quaker
family. She was introduced to Dr. Charles Schäffer on a trip to the Rockies, and
in 1889 they were married. His interest in botany drew them back to the Rockies,
where Charles collected, documented, and photographed specimens until his death
in 1903. Mary also became adept at these skills. After hearing Sir James Hector
(the geologist on the Palliser Expedition) reciting tales of the mountains, her zest
to explore the wilderness returned. In 1908, Mary, guide Billy Warren, and a small
party set out for a lake that no white man had ever seen but that the Stoney knew as
Chaba Imne (Beaver Lake). After initial difficulties, they succeeded in finding the
elusive body of water now known as Maligne Lake. In Mary's words, “There burst