KOOTENAY NATIONAL PARK mftte BANFF WINDERMERE HIGHWAY Kootenay National Park The Banff Windermere Highway 6y M.B.WILLIAMS F. A. ACLAND Printer to the King's Most Excellent Majesty Ottawa. 1928 SKETCH MAP -* OF THE *- BANFF-WINDERMERE ROAD CASTLE TO RADIUM HOT SPRINGS SECTION Motor Camp! shown thus Gas Stations . •• - - OTOR highway across the Central Cana- Bienaalow Camps • p .. I dian Rockies from Banff via Vermilion Motor Roeeets i n.. Pass to Windermere Valley, passing through Trails a ••- M= " ^ Rocky Mountains and Kootenay National MILEAGE CHART Parks and giving access to the famous resorts; Banff, CtltMtn hVemilim Summit 10 lt\\n Lake Louise, Valley of the Ten Peaks, Moraine Lake, VtrmilionSummittoMomLCanysii 50 • Mirble Canyon to Black's Camp 5' 3 ' Paradise Valley, Marble Canyon and Sinclair Radium Black's Camp to tUk Crook 4T • Hot Springs. Hawk Crook to Vermilion Crajjuig 5 6 * Vermilion Crossing to Simpoon River. .4'5 ' Direct connections from Spokane, Seattle, Vancou­ 5impsonRivertoWarJle Creek M) • Wardle Creek toKcote'iayCroMino .7 '6 " ver and Victoria, Portland, San Francisco and Los Koo+enayCroMinnto McLeodMeaaCnvs 11 "0 " Angeles with Banff-Windermere Highway on west, McLeoct MeaeloivotoSineljjrjnmmit 9 T " 5iwW5«mmiHaCclumaiiVdlllyRoaa 8 '5 * via Invermere, Cranbrook and Kingsgate, B.C., and CootieMta to Colnmlia Valley Road.. 72'9 Milts on the east from Grand Canyon, Salt Lake City, Colicmb.aValLy Rooa to F,rlands5to 1 • 2 Mile! Helena, the Yellowstone and Glazier National Parks via Coutts or Piegan, Mont., and Lethbridge or Cardston, Alta., to Calgary, the Gateway to the Central Rockies. Extension loop route through southern Cana­ dian Rockies via the Crowsnest Pass, giving access to Waterton Lakes National Park, and also from Lake Louise over famous Kicking Horse Pass through Central Rockies passing through Yoho National Park and visiting Field, Yoho Valley, Emerald Lake, and via the spectacular Kicking Horse Canyon, Golden, B.C., and Columbia River Road. Kootenay National Park & Banff- Windermere Highway Give to me the life I love- Let what will be o'er me; Give the face of earth around And the road before me. — R. L. Stevenson HE Kootenay National Park is unique among the other Canadian reservations. It is primarily not a National Park but a National THighway Park. It was created originally, not so much for its own sake, as to preserve in perpetuity the beauty of the natural landscape, the charm of native animal and plant life, the peace and harmony of the whole environment, such as we have come to associate with a National Park, along the entire route of the so-called Banff-Windermere Highway, the first motor road across the Central Canadian Rockies. The eastern end of the road—from Banff to the Vermilion Pass—lay already in the Rocky Mountains National Park and the preservation of its environment was assured. The western end—from the Vermilion Pass to the Windermere Valley—led through a virgin mountain region, the original beauty of which had not been disturbed. The desire to keep this environment unspoiled, to preserve the character of the road throughout, led to the setting aside of this Highway Park, con­ sisting of a region ten miles wide and approximately sixty miles long, known as the Kootenay National Park. While the Park, as originally created, was thought of as secondary to the road, as time has gone on and the territory enclosed has been more thoroughly explored, it has become evident that Kootenay National Park has a number of very interesting features, including glaciers, waterfalls and a picturesque "berg" lake. The first tourists made the journey over the beautiful highway an end in itself—as indeed it may well be. But as the interesting regions within the Kootenay Park have become better known, the Park itself is more and more becoming an objective and each year increasing numbers make camp at different points along the highway and, a-foot or by pony- back, explore the glaciers and snowfields found in the neighbouring ranges or take their way across the passes to lesser known regions of Sinclair Canyon or Parson's Gap the Yoho or Rocky Mountains National Parks. "A mighty cleft within the bosoming hills A narrow gateway to the mountain's heart.' Seven The Conquest of the Canadian Rockies The conquests of the modern highway engineer in the last quarter of a century have become so numerous that we are scarcely astonished at any achievement. Yet the final conquering of the Rockies in so short a period of time consti­ tutes a victory over the oppos­ ing forces of Nature of which any century might well be proud. So quickly have come the developments of the last half century that it is difficult for most of us to realize condi­ tions existing little more than half a lifetime ago. It seems strange that fifty years ago the Canadian Rockies were still an unknown wilderness, a tangled chaos of peaks, thrusting their terrifying barrier of four hun­ dred miles between the prairies and the sea. The completion of the Cana­ dian Pacific Railway forty years ago marked the first victory over the mountains. It meant that the East and the West were no longer separated; that an artery had been opened up by which the life blood of the Dom­ inion might flow uninterrup­ tedly from coast to coast. The Curious but friendly building through the Yellow- head Pass of the two northern lines now known as the Canadian National Railways provided two more steel highways. Beyond the valleys and passes traversed by these more or less confined and restricted routes of travel, however, the wilderness of the mountains remained almost a closed land, a terra incognita to everyone except the rare trapper or explorer who followed some old Indian trail through the tangled chaos of peaks. With the coming of the motor car, however, a new chapter in history was opened. Soon, everywhere, came the demand for roads—roads to all the beautiful and interesting places of the earth. It was inevitable Eight Mount Rundle from Banff-Windermere Highway Nine Near Sinclair Summit. Kootenay National Park The Iron Gates. Kootenay National Park Nature's entrance to Kootenay National ParJc. formed by towers of red rock several hundred still fresh in men's minds but with the development of the century feet high came too, a new mind. Difficulties of construction were no longer an that sooner or later the dream of motor highways across the wonderland insuperable stay to any road project. An all-Canadian highway from of the Central Canadian Rockies—giving access to its famous regions coast to coast already began to be spoken of and one of the first and and to the glories of the National Parks—should begin to stir in the most important links, it was seen, was a crossing of the Central Rockies. minds of imaginative men. The memory, it is true, of the struggles It was about 1911 that the project of the transmontane highway was and difficulties attendant upon the construction of the railways was first formulated and in considering a possible route for such a highway, 7en Eleven Olive Lake. Kootenay National Park "Where the grey trout lies asleep." the suitability of an almost unknown pass, put forward seventy years before by one of the greatest explorers the Canadian mountains had known, as the natural and best route for a road, was recalled. This was the so-called Vermilion Pass, some thirty miles south of the famous Kicking Horse Pass, crossed by Dr. Hector on that eventful journey of exploration which was to mean so much to the future destiny of Canada. In 1858, under orders from Her Majesty's Govern­ Hector's Journey ment the Palliser Expedition was seeking a possible Top of Sinclair Summit. Kootenay National Park and Discovery of route for a wagon road in all British territory Every side my glance was bent. Vermilion Pass O'er the grandeur and the beauty lavished through the whole ascent. across the unknown wilderness of the Rockies, —Browning carrying out its exploration work in three divisions. Dr. Hector was in command of the central one, charged to explore the unknown passes and he decided to make it his first quest. Turning away from the at the head of the Bow Valley. Definite information about the region broad valley of the Bow he cut a trail with great difficulty up the steep was practically non-existent. Hector's best reliance was the often ascent of nine miles to that "wide notch in the mountains"inow known vague details he could gather from the Indians. They had told him of as the Vermilion Pass. Its accessibility and low altitude, the absence a pass, once used by the Kootenays, to the south of Castle Mountain Thirteen Twelve Mountain Forest Road. Kcotenay National Park Among the Poplars—MacLeod Meadows. Kootenay National Park Walls of gieen where the wind and the sunlight stir. —William Wilfrid Campbell and eight horses were travel-worn and emaciated. Yet, sitting in his of any really difficult engineering problems, and the good approaches "little leather wigwam" traded from the Stonies, in a meadow near the from both sides impressed him strongly. junction of the Kootenay and Vermilion Rivers, Hector wrote in his His journey down the west slope was attended by many difficulties. diary, in what was for him an unusually enthusiastic vein: The weather was bad and food was increasingly scarce. The little "Of all the passes traversed by our expedition the most favourable cavalcade of three Red River men, his Indian guide, "Nimrod," and inexpensive to render available for wheeled conveyances would be Fourteen Fifteen Kootenay River near McLeod Meadows.