Banff National Park is Canada’s oldest national park, established in 1885. Located in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, Banff encompasses 6,641 square kilometres of mountainous terrain, with many glaciers and ice fields. The Icefields Parkway extends from Lake Louise, connecting to Jasper National Park in the north. Mammal species such as the grizzly bear, cougar, wolverine, elk, bighorn sheep and moose are found.
About Banff National Park in brief
Banff National Park is Canada’s oldest national park, established in 1885. Located in Alberta’s Rocky Mountains, Banff encompasses 6,641 square kilometres of mountainous terrain, with many glaciers and ice fields. The Icefields Parkway extends from Lake Louise, connecting to Jasper National Park in the north. The main commercial centre of the park is the town of Banff, in the Bow River valley. Mammal species such as the grizzly bear, cougar, wolverine, elk, bighorn sheep and moose are found, along with hundreds of bird species. Archaeological evidence found at Vermilion Lakes indicates the first human activity in Banff to 10,300 B. P. Prior to European contact, the area was home to many Indigenous Peoples, including the Stoney Nakoda, Ktunaxa, Tsuut’ina, Kainaiwa, Piikani, Siksika, and Plains Cree. The Canadian Pacific Railway built the Banff Springs Hotel and Chateau Lake Louise to attract tourists and increase the number of rail passengers. In the early 20th century, roads were built in the park, at times by war internees from World War I, and through Great Depression-era public works projects. Since the 1960s, park accommodations have been open all year, with annual tourism visits to Banff increasing to over 5 million in the 1990s. Millions more pass through the park on the Trans-Canada Highway. The forests are dominated by Lodgepole pine at lower elevations and Engelmann spruce in higher ones below the treeline, above which is primarily rocks and ice.
The mountains are formed from sedimentary rocks which were pushed east over newer rock strata, between 80 and 55 million years ago. Erosion from water and ice have carved the mountains into their current shapes. Over the past few million years, glaciers have at times covered most of the Park, but today are found only on the mountain slopes though they include the Columbia Icefield, the largest uninterrupted glacial mass in the Rockies. The park has a subarctic climate with three ecoregions, including montane, subalpine, and alpine. It was the third national park established in North America, after Yellowstone and Mackininac National Parks, after being named Rocky Mountains Park and Rocky Mountain National Park, respectively. It is home to over 3 million visitors annually, the majority of whom come to see the Grand Canyon of Canada and the Canadian Shield. It has a population of over 2,000,000 people, the highest concentration of which is in the northern part of the national park. The national park is located in the province of Alberta, 110–180 kilometres west of Calgary, and is the largest national park in Canada. The National Park Service is based in Calgary and has a budget of more than $1.5 billion ($1.7 billion) per year. It also has a regional office in Calgary.
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This page is based on the article Banff National Park published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 03, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
