National park that draws 3 million visitors a year

Press, 12 November 1985, Page 17

National park that draws 3 million visitors a year

By

JOY ASCHENBACH,

National

Geographic News Service

Frank McCabe and the McCardell brothers climbed down a treetrunk ladder through a hole in the roof of a cave in the Canadian Rockies in 1883 and discovered something as good as gold.

“Like some fantastic dream from a tale of the Arabian Nights,” William McCardell described it: a mist-filled wonderland of dripping stalactites and bubbling warm waters, similar to the strange basin of hot springs the trio had found nearby.

Railroad workers turned prospectors, they smelled a fortune in the “healing” sulphur springs. Rough bathhouses were soon constructed. The Canadian Pacific Railway was pushing west through the snowcapped mountains to the coast

But the men had not staked a clear claim to their springs near CPR Siding 29. The railroad and the Canadian Government stepped in. In 1885, the hot springs anti 10 square miles of land around them became the birthplace of Canada’s first national park. The park would help pay for completing a Canadian dream, a transcontinental railroad.

Siding 29 would become Banff town, named for the Scottish birthplace of the railroad’s first presi-

dent. The park legislation noted that the springs “promise to be of great sanitary advantage to the public.” Yet Banff in the beginning was an international spa for the well-to-do, advertised as "an enclave of refined civilisation, deep within the Canadian wilderness.” Grand hotels were built overlooking the Bow River Valley and at Lake Louise, jewel among the mountains’ emerald lakes. Swiss mountaineering guides were brought in to escort socialites and outdoorsmen to the glaciers and back-country. At age 100, Banff is Canada’s most visited national park, attracting more than three million people each year, more than the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, or 113-year-old Yellowstone, the oldest United States national park. More than half of Banff s visitors are from the United States.

The 2564 square miles or 1.6 million acres that now make the park one of Canada’s largest are renowned for perhaps the most magnificent mountain vistas in North America.

“Banff is as much a symbol of Canada as the R.C.M.P. (Mounties) in scarlet,” says a park official, Rob Harding. “It is the spearhead of the balancing act between development of recreation facilities and preservation of the natural environment”

The demands on Banff have swelled beyond the sulphur springs, once bottled as a cure-all for everything from gout to gunshot wounds. Keeping up with recreational trends has led to 2500 campsites, 800 miles of back-country trails, ski slopes on three mountains, the build-up of Banff town, upgrading service facilities at Lake Louise, and “twinning” the TransCanada Highway through the-park to a four-lane, dual roadway. Five to seven million people, sometimes at a bumper-to-bumper crawl, pass through Banff each year.

“It used to be, years ago, that Banff would close down in the winter. Now, not only ski-ing, but winter camping is popular,” Rob Harding says. The 1988 Winter Olympics are to be held at the

park’s doorstep, sprawling over the open country between Calgary and Banffs east side.

Having a town in a national park may not conform to current concepts of ideal planning, but Banffs western town of 4000 “has grown hand in hand with the park,” Mr Harding points out. “It was the base camp of the Rockies. It has a historical role.”

Park headquarters looks straight down the one main street — gold and white centennial banners flying — into the craggy face of Cascade Mountain. Future construction is to be confined to “filling-in” on vacant sites within the existing town limits.

The park itself is protected on the north and west by three other national parks, Jasper, Yoho, and Kootenay. In all, there are 31 national parks and park reserves in the Parks Canada system, the newest ones in the northern Yukon and the Arctic islands.

The goal, according to a Parks Canada spokesman, Michel Girard, is to establish one national park in each of 48 ecologically distinct regions across the country. Forty per cent of the regions now have parks. Those that do not are in the north.

After 100 years, Banff still possesses a staggering range of

natural wonders, from a dozen waterfalls tumbling down a “weeping” mountain wall to ghostly “hoodoos,” strangely shaped pillars of sand, soil, rock, and gravel left along the river bank by erosion. Grizzly bears, bighorn sheep, elk, and mountain goats still roam free, but when bears bother tourists, they are helicoptered back to the wild by park wardens. Park officials, fearing a serious poaching problem, plan an official census of the wildlife.

Splashing through a stony mountain stream on horseback, one can still hear the past sounding through the valley in the moaning horn of the Canadian Pacific as it speeds along the main line through the Rockies.

Although the original hot springs are no longer the lure of todays Banff, they are the focus of this year’s centennial celebration. Parks Canada spent ?9 million creating a centennial centre around them — restoring the elaborate stone bathhouse, swimming pool, and terraced teahouse to their 1914 splendour. The structures had been closed since 1976 because of dangerous deterioration. This summer it is possible to put on a 1914style bathing suit (available for rent) for a dip in the new hot-spring-fed pool.