Jasper National Park

Jasper National Park

Access

By road

Yellowhead Highway 16, Prince George-Jasper-Edmonton; Icefields Parkway.

By rail

"The Canadian" (VIA Rail: Toronto-Edmonton-Jasper-Vancouver); "The Rocky Mountaineer" (Vancouver-Jasper)

By bus

Brewster Transportation & Tours, from Calgary via Banff and the Icefields Parkway to Jasper

Location

Jasper National Park, with an area of 10,878 sq.

km (4,199 sq. mi.), is the biggest National Park in Canada's Rocky Mountains, a continuation of magnificent mountain scenery, with majestic mountains, glaciers, crystal-clear lakes, waterfalls and narrow gorges, pine woods and, in summer, lovely mountain meadows covered with flowers. Here on the border of British Columbia the snowcapped pyramid of Mount Columbia peaks at 3747 m (12,298 ft) on the edge of the Columbia Icefield (see Icefields Parkway). Some tourist roads to particularly lovely areas also give the motorist easy access to the most spectacular scenery. However large sections of the National Park are being kept in their original state, and can only be reached on foot, by canoe or on horseback.

History

The town of Jasper dates from 1911 when the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was built along the Athabasca River to the Yellowhead Pass, although David Thompson had already established a modest little settlement here a hundred years earlier for the North West Company when he was looking for a northern route over the Rocky Mountains in 1811. For fifty years the fur trappers' main route was to lead over the Athabasca Pass. A little monument near Beauvert Lake commemorates "Henry House" (Old Fort Point), a refuge for trappers and the place where they got their supplies.

Jasper House, named after Jasper Hawes who lived here for a long time, was built in what is now the eastern section of Jasper Park in 1813. In the second half of the 19th c. the number of travelers here dwindled until Jasper was visited only by a few adventurers and gold-prospectors, explorers and particular enthusiasts such as the painter Paul Kane or the extraordinary Mary Schäffer, who followed old Indian trails and in 1908 reached Maligne Lake, hitherto unknown.

By 1907 several thousand square miles of wilderness had been designated the Jasper National Park.