07/08/2026
The establishment of Banff as Canada's first national park in 1885 begins with a dispute between railway workers over a hot spring. In November 1883, three Canadian Pacific Railway workers, William McCardell, Tom McCardell, and Frank McCabe, discovered a cave containing a naturally occurring hot spring on the lower slopes of Sulphur Mountain in what would become Alberta. Competing claims were quickly filed. The federal government moved to prevent private appropriation of the site and in November 1885 set aside a reserve around the Cave and Basin springs. This became Rocky Mountains Park in 1887, the first national park in Canada and the third in the world. The Canadian Pacific Railway built the Banff Springs Hotel in 1888, one of the most famous resort hotels in North America, drawing visitors from across Canada, the United States, and Europe. The pattern of tourism has continued for nearly 140 years. The park today covers 6,641 square kilometres of the Canadian Rockies, containing glaciers, icefields, alpine meadows, turquoise glacial lakes whose colour comes from glacial rock flour, and mountain peaks reaching above 3,600 metres. Wildlife includes grizzly and black bears, wolves, elk, bighorn sheep, and mountain goats. More than four million people visit Banff every year. The town of Banff is the only incorporated town within a Canadian national park, with a year-round population of approximately 8,000 people.
