BACKGROUND - Canadian Rockies: Including Banff and Jasper National Parks - page 519

In 1811, he discovered Athabasca Pass, which was used as the main route west for the next
50 years.
In 1857, with the fur trade in decline, the British government sent Captain John Palliser
to investigate the agricultural potential of western Rupert's Land. During his three-year
journey, he explored many of the watersheds leading into the mountains, including one trip
up the Bow River and over Vermilion Pass into the area now encompassed by Kootenay
and Yoho National Parks.
The Dominion of Canada
By the 1860s, some of the eastern provinces were tiring of British rule, and a movement
was abuzz to push for Canadian independence. The British government, wary of losing
Canada as it had lost the United States, passed legislation establishing the Dominion of
Canada. At that time, the North-West Territories, as Rupert's Land had become known,
was a foreign land to those in eastern Canada; life out west was primitive with no laws,
and no outpost held more than a couple of dozen residents. But in an effort to solidify the
Dominion, the government bought the North-West Territories back from the Hudson's Bay
Company in 1867. In 1871, British Columbia agreed to join the Dominion as well, but only
on the condition that the federal government build a railway to link the fledgling province
with the rest of the country.
The Coming of the Railway
The idea of a rail line across the continent, replacing canoe and cart routes, was met with
scorn by those in the east, who saw it as unnecessary and uneconomical. But the line
pushed westward, reaching Winnipeg in 1879 and what was then Fort Calgary in 1883.
Many routes across the Continental Divide were considered by the Canadian Pacific
Railway, but Kicking Horse Pass, surveyed by Major A. B. Rogers in 1881, got the final
nod. The line and its construction camps pushed into the mountains, reaching Siding 29
(known today as Banff) early in the fall of 1883, Laggan (Lake Louise) a couple of months
later, then crossing the divide and reaching the Field construction camp in the summer of
1884. The following year, on November 7, 1885, the final spike was laid, opening up the
lanes of commerce between British Columbia and the rest of Canada. In 1914, rival com-
pany Grand Trunk Pacific Railway completed a second rail line across the Rockies, to the
north through what is now Jasper National Park.