42 Fun Facts About Banff National Park

In which Canadian province is Banff National Park?

Alberta is younger than the park: when the first reserve was set aside here the land was still part of the North-West Territories, and the province was only created in 1905.

Banff is Canada's oldest national park; which American one is the world's oldest?

Yellowstone opened in 1872. Banff followed in 1885, when a fight over private claims pushed Ottawa to reserve 26 sq km for the public, and it became a full national park two years later.

What natural feature, found by railway workers in 1883, led to the creation of Banff National Park?

Thermal springs on Sulphur Mountain, reached through a cave by railway workers in 1883, prompted the reserve; competing private claims to the springs pushed Ottawa to keep them in public hands.

Which prime minister's government set aside the 1885 reserve that grew into Banff National Park?

John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister, had his government reserve the disputed site to block private claims; those 26 sq km were the seed of Canada's national park system.

Under what name was Banff known officially from 1887 until 1930?

Rocky Mountains Park was the name set by the 1887 act that made the small reserve Canada's first national park; the National Parks Act of 1930 swapped it for Banff, the name its railway stop and town had carried for decades.

The name Banff was borrowed from a town and county in which country?

Scotland supplied the name: a Scottish-born railway director named the new stop in the Rockies after Banff in his homeland, and the town and the park inherited it.

Which company built the Banff Springs Hotel and Chateau Lake Louise to attract tourists?

The Canadian Pacific Railway built grand hotels along its line to give wealthy travellers a reason to ride it; the Banff Springs opened in 1888 and became known as the Castle in the Rockies.

What flows through the town of Banff, tumbling over falls on its outskirts?

The Bow River drops over Bow Falls on the edge of town, then runs east across the prairies, turning turbines and watering farms before its water finally reaches Hudson Bay.

Which city, about 130 km east on the Trans-Canada Highway, is the nearest big city to Banff?

Calgary is the usual gateway, about 130 km east on the Trans-Canada Highway; early tourists arrived by train, and cars were barred from the park's roads until about 1910.

Which national park borders Banff to the north, linked to it by the Icefields Parkway?

Jasper takes over where Banff ends, at Sunwapta Pass on the Icefields Parkway, and it is much the larger of the two, covering about 11,000 sq km of the Rockies.

Which pass carries the Trans-Canada Highway over the Continental Divide out of Banff?

Kicking Horse Pass was named in 1858, when James Hector, geologist of the Palliser Expedition, was by his own account kicked in the chest by his horse and knocked senseless; the first transcontinental railway later took the same gap.

After whom is Lake Louise named?

A daughter of Queen Victoria, Princess Louise, was married to Canada's governor general; railway workman Tom Wilson had named it Emerald Lake in 1882, and it was renamed in her honour two years later.

What gives Lake Louise its turquoise colour?

Rock flour from glacial meltwater does it: the glaciers above the lake grind bedrock into a silt so fine that it hangs in the water instead of sinking, and it scatters blue-green light.

Which body of water in the Valley of the Ten Peaks was on the Canadian $20 bill from 1969?

Moraine Lake, in the Valley of the Ten Peaks, appeared on the back of the 1969 Scenes of Canada $20 note, and the viewpoint from its rockpile became known as the Twenty Dollar View.

Hikers who walk 3.5 km uphill from Lake Louise reach a lakeside cabin that has served what since 1905?

Tea has been poured beside Lake Agnes since 1905, at a refuge for hikers first built in 1901; it still has no electricity, so everything on the menu is made by hand.

Which icefield, the largest uninterrupted glacial mass in the Rockies, straddles Banff's northern border?

The Columbia Icefield lies across the Continental Divide, so its meltwater leaves three ways: to the Pacific by the Columbia, to the Arctic by the Athabasca and to Hudson Bay by the North Saskatchewan.

Which royal couple stayed at Banff's backcountry Skoki Lodge during a 2011 tour of Canada?

William and Catherine, married that spring, stayed at Skoki on their first tour together; the 1930s log ski lodge lies at the end of an 11 km trail from Lake Louise that guests hike in summer and ski in winter.

Which long-studied Banff glacier has lost about 70% of its mass since measurements began?

Peyto Glacier has one of the longest measurement records of any glacier, and federal scientists say it has lost about 70 per cent of its mass; the prairie rivers it feeds are losing that water.

Which pyramid-shaped peak on the edge of Banff National Park is nicknamed the Matterhorn of the Rockies?

Mount Assiniboine, 3,618 m, stands on the Continental Divide with one flank in Banff; several attempts failed before James Outram and two Swiss guides reached the top in 1901.

Which wedge-shaped mountain beside the Banff townsite is a textbook example of a 'dip slope' peak?

Mount Rundle's rock layers tilt steeply to the southwest, which gives it one long smooth back and a wall of cliffs on the other side; it is named for Robert Rundle, a missionary who visited in the 1840s.

Which group built much of Banff's early road infrastructure during the First World War?

Wartime internees, many of them Ukrainian immigrants held as enemy aliens, were used as forced labour: from a camp at Castle Mountain in 1915, their main job was to push the road from Banff on toward Lake Louise.

What do scuba divers visit on the bottom of Banff's Lake Minnewanka?

A flooded resort village, Minnewanka Landing, lies under the lake: a dam built in 1912 partly drowned it and a bigger one in 1941 finished the job, so divers now swim among its house foundations.

Which ski resort in Banff National Park was developed by the Brewster family in the 1930s?

Sunshine Village grew out of a railway company log cabin high in the alpine meadows, which the Brewsters took over in the mid-1930s to put up paying ski guests.

Which city beat Banff to host the 1972 Winter Olympics?

Sapporo won the 1966 vote in Rome by 32 to 16; Banff's bid had been fought at home by conservation groups, who feared large-scale building inside a national park.

Castle Mountain bore the name of which American general from 1946 until 1979?

Dwight D. Eisenhower was given the honour in 1946, fresh from commanding the Allied armies in Europe; after protests the old name came back in 1979, and his name was left on a single tower of the mountain.

Which international designation did Banff and its neighbouring parks receive in 1984?

World Heritage Site status came from UNESCO in 1984 for four adjoining national parks, listed together for their peaks, glaciers and canyons and for the half-billion-year-old fossils of the Burgess Shale.

Roughly how many visits does Banff National Park record in a typical year?

About 4 million visits a year make Banff the busiest national park in Canada; the crush of cars grew so heavy that in 2023 Parks Canada closed the road to one famous lake to personal vehicles.

What must most people have before they may live in the town of Banff?

A job in the park is the usual test: a 'need to reside' rule keeps housing for people who work or run a business there, so a home in Banff can't be bought simply as a getaway.

How does Parks Canada tell Banff hikers to travel through bear country?

Loudly, in a tight group: hikers are told to call out, clap or sing so that bears hear them coming, to stay together and to keep bear spray within easy reach.

Which animal, often seen grazing in the town of Banff, can attack without warning during its autumn rut?

Elk bulls turn belligerent in the autumn rut and cows defend their calves in spring, so visitors are told to stay at least 30 metres away, about three bus lengths, even on a town lawn.

Which large animal was released into Banff's backcountry in 2017, returning to the wild there after more than a century?

Plains bison were hunted almost to extinction across the West; a small herd released in Banff's remote backcountry in 2017 now roams free, and its calves were the first born wild there in well over a century.

What wiped out the last small caribou herd in Banff National Park in 2009?

An avalanche in 2009 killed every member of Banff's last small caribou herd; Parks Canada's conservation plan for the mountain parks lists re-establishing that herd among its aims.

Which kind of animal is the endangered species that lives in Banff and nowhere else on Earth?

A snail: the Banff Springs snail lives only in a handful of warm mineral pools beside the town, and because the whole species is confined to them Canada lists it as endangered.

Which Bow Valley Parkway canyon is walked on catwalks to its Lower and Upper Falls?

Johnston Canyon is walked on suspended catwalks and railed bridges that lead to its Lower and then its Upper Falls; in winter the waterfalls freeze solid, and ice climbers move in.

Which tree of Banff's valley forests keeps its cones sealed with resin until a wildfire's heat opens them?

Lodgepole pine holds its seeds in cones glued shut by resin; the heat of a wildfire melts the bond and frees them, so fire itself sows the next forest.

Which insect pest, helped by milder winters, has killed large stands of Banff's conifers?

Mountain pine beetle larvae tunnel through the living layer under a pine's bark and kill the tree; hard winters once held them back, and warming has let outbreaks spread through Banff and far beyond it.

Which animal popped up in front of a couple's camera at Lake Minnewanka in 2009 and became a worldwide meme?

A squirrel, soon dubbed the Crasher Squirrel, stood up in front of a Minnesota couple's camera in May 2009; after National Geographic posted the shot online, people pasted the animal into famous paintings and news photos.

Which First Nation gave Banff's Lake Minnewanka its name, which means 'water of the spirits'?

The Stoney Nakoda knew it as Minn-waki, the lake of the spirits; they hunted these mountains, and after they signed Treaty 7 in 1877 their reserve was laid out in the foothills to the east.

Which coal-mining town at Cascade Mountain, open from 1903 to 1922, is now a Banff ghost town?

Bankhead's mine supplied the railway with coal from 1903; when it shut in 1922 the company town emptied, and many of its houses, and even its station, were moved to Banff.

Which autumn event has the Banff Centre run since 1976?

The Banff Mountain Film Festival has run every autumn since 1976, and straight after it a selection of its best films sets off on a tour around the world.

Archaeological finds at which Banff site show human presence going back more than 10,000 years?

Vermilion Lakes, beside the town of Banff, were excavated by Parks Canada archaeologists in the 1980s; they found layer upon layer of campsites, the oldest left more than 10,000 years ago by hunters of mountain sheep.

Driving west on the Trans-Canada Highway, travellers cross straight from Banff into which British Columbia national park?

Yoho begins where Banff ends, on the crest of the Continental Divide, and its name is a Cree exclamation of awe; Kootenay also touches Banff, farther to the south.