23 June: Banff National Park

On this date in 1887, Banff National Park, Canada’s first, was created. 10 things you might not know about Banff National Park.

1. It was the first national park in Canada and the third in the world.

2. It was created after railway workers discovered a natural hot spring at the base of Sulphur Mountain. Prime Minister Macdonald set aside a 26 square kilometres in 1885 to preserve the natural beauty of the area. Two years later it became a national park, then known as the Rocky Mountains Park. It was re-named Banff National Park in 1930, after Banffshire, Scotland, where the president of the Canadian Pacific Railway was born.

3. The park is located in Alberta's Rocky Mountains, 110–180 kilometres (68–112 miles) west of Calgary. It encompasses 6,641 square kilometres (2,564 sq miles) of mountainous terrain.

4. The tallest peak entirely within the park is Mount Forbes at 3,612 metres (11,850 ft). Mount Assiniboine is slightly higher at 3,618 m (11,870 ft) but is on the Banff-Mount Assiniboine Provincial Park border.

5. There are 1,600 kilometres of hiking trails in the park and more than 2,468 campsites. The Town of Banff has an elevation of 4,537 feet (1,383 metres), making it the highest town in Canada.

6. It’s the only national park in the world to have a distillery. It’s called Park Distillery. Its use of pure, glacial water and small batches are what makes its spirits especially good.

7. The park has lakes which are amazing shades of blue or green: namely Lake Louise, Moraine Lake, Peyto Lake, and Bow Lake. The colour comes from rocks which are ground into powder by the glaciers and which reflect sunlight.

8. Peyto Lake is named for a historical figure associated with the area, Bill Peyto, a pioneer and park warden who has become a legend in his own lunchtime. It’s said he raised cougar kittens and once walked into a bar carrying a live lynx on his back just to scare people. There’s a bar named for him, Wild Bill's, and he is the person pictured on the “Welcome to Banff” sign.

9. Other features include Canada’s longest cave system, Castle Mountain, was named by James Hector in 1858, because he thought it looked like a castle, and a triple divide, a rare feature of the landscape where water flowing from the mountains flows into three separate drainage basins which then end up in either the Atlantic, the Pacific, or the Arctic Ocean.

10. Banff National Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and welcomes over 4,500,000 tourists every year.

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