BACKGROUND - Canadian Rockies: Including Banff and Jasper National Parks - page 520

PARKS AND TOURISM
The Parks of Today Take Shape
In 1883, three Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) workers stumbled on hot springs at the
base of Sulphur Mountain, near where the town of Banff now lies. This was the height of
the Victorian era, when the great spa resorts of Europe were attracting hordes of wealthy
clients. With the thought of developing a similar-style resort, the government designated
a 2,600-hectare (6,425-acre) reserve around the hot springs, surveyed a town site, and
encouraged the CPR to build a world-class hotel there. In 1887, Rocky Mountains Park
was officially created, setting aside 67,300 hectares (166,300 acres) as a “public park and
pleasure ground for the benefit, advantage, and enjoyment of the people of Canada.” The
park was later renamed Banff. It was Canada's first national park and only the third nation-
al park in the world.
Across the Continental Divide to the west, the railway passed by a small reserve that
had been created around the base of Mount Stephen. This was the core of what would be-
come Yoho National Park, officially dedicated in 1901. In anticipation of a flood of visit-
ors to the mountains along the more northerly Grand Trunk Pacific Railway, Jasper Forest
Park was established in 1907 (renamed Jasper National Park in 1930). Kootenay National
Park was created to protect an eight-kilometer-wide (five-mile-wide) strip of land on either
side of the Banff-Windermere Road, which was completed in 1922. Of the five national
parks in the Canadian Rockies, Waterton Lakes National Park was the only one created
purely for its aesthetic value. It was established after tireless public campaigning by local
resident John George “Kootenai” Brown, who also became the park's first superintendent.
The First Tourists Arrive
In the era the parks were created, the Canadian Rockies region was a vast wilderness ac-
cessible only by rail. The parks and the landscape they encompassed were seen as eco-
nomic resources to be exploited rather than as national treasures to be preserved. Logging,
hunting, and mining were permitted inside park boundaries; all but Kootenay National
Park had mines operating within them for many years (the last mine, in Yoho National
Park, closed in 1952). To help finance the rail line, the CPR began encouraging visitors
to the mountains by building grand mountain resorts: Mount Stephen House in 1886, the
Banff Springs Hotel in 1888, a lodge at Lake Louise in 1890, and Emerald Lake Lodge in
1902. Knowledgeable locals, some of whom had been used as guides and outfitters dur-
ing railway construction, offered their services to the tourists the railway brought. Tom
Wilson, “Wild” Bill Peyto, Jim and Bill Brewster, the Otto Brothers, and Donald “Curly”