WATERTON LAKES NATIONAL PARK - Canadian Rockies: Including Banff and Jasper National Parks - page 406

Heritage Centre has a great little free checklist for birders listing the 250 species recorded
within park boundaries.
HISTORY
Evidence found within the park suggests that the Kootenay people who lived west of the
park made trips across the Continental Divide 8,000-10,000 years ago to hunt bison on
the plains and fish in the lakes. They camped in the valleys during winter, taking shelter
from the harsh weather. But by about 1,500 years ago, they were spending more time in
the west and crossing the mountains only a few times a year to hunt bison. By the 1700s,
the Blackfoot—with the help of horses—had expanded their territory from the Battle River
throughout southwestern Alberta. They patrolled the mountains on horseback, making it
difficult for the Kootenay hunting parties to cross. But their dominance was short-lived.
With the arrival of guns and the encroaching homesteads of early settlers, Blackfoot tribes
retreated to the east, leaving the Waterton Lakes Valley uninhabited.
Oil City
Kootenai Brown, the valley's first permanent settler, first noticed beads of oil floating on
Cameron Creek. He and a business partner siphoned it from the water's surface, bottled it,
and sold it in Fort Macleod and Cardston. This discovery created much interest among the
oil-starved entrepreneurs of Alberta, who formed the Rocky Mountain Development Com-
pany to do some exploratory drilling. At this stage the park was still a forest reserve; the
trees were protected, but prospecting and mining were still allowed. A rough road was con-
structed through the Cameron Creek Valley, and in September 1901 the company struck oil
at a depth of 311 meters (1,020 feet). It was the first producing oil well in western Canada
and only the second in the country. In the resulting euphoria, a town site named Oil City
was cleared and surveyed, a bunkhouse and dining hall were constructed, and the found-
ations for a hotel were laid. The boom was short-lived. Drilling rigs kept breaking down,
and the flow of oil soon slowed to a trickle. A monument along the Akamina Parkway
stands at the site of the well, and a little farther up the road at a roadside marker, a trail
leads through thick undergrowth to the town site. All that remains are the ill-fated hotel's
foundations and some depressions in the ground.
Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park
After becoming the valley's first permanent resident in 1869, Kootenai Brown began pro-
moting the beauty of the area to the people of Fort Macleod. One of his friends, local
rancher F. W. Godsal, began lobbying the federal government to establish a reserve. In