In the autumn of 1883, three railroad workers, facing a lonely winter in the wilds of Canada's Rocky Mountains, decided to do a little exploring. When they shimmied down a fallen tree trunk into a stinking hole in the ground, they hoped to see the glint of gold in the light of their candles. What they found instead in the cavernous space below was the new gold of tourism, as this was what would become the Cave and Basin National Historic Site and the wellspring of Canada's National Park System.

The Coming of the Railroad

In 1871 British Columbia somewhat reluctantly gave up colonial status to become a Province of the four-year-old Dominion of Canada. What had convinced British Columbian negotiators was prime minister Sir John A MacDonald's promise of a railroad connecting Vancouver Island to Ontario, to be completed within ten years. It would actually take almost 15 years - an amazing feat considering the distance and the diversely hostile nature of the undeveloped territory to be crossed – before any of British Columbia was connected to the other provinces of Canada. The line to Vancouver Island, although surveyed, was never completed.

In 1878 Sir John A was returned to power for a second term with a burning desire to complete the railroad to British Columbia. Convinced of the power of private enterprise, Sir John A cajoled Parliament into turning the project over to a newly formed company, the Canadian Pacific Railway Syndicate, headed by Company President George Stephen, a native of Banffshire. The company was incorporated early in 1881. Despite a great deal of survey work already having been done on a northern route across the Prairies, through Edmonton and the Yellowhead Pass, the directors of the CPR suddenly decided on a southern route through Medicine Hat, Calgary, and the Bow River Valley to Kicking Horse Pass.

The choice of the Bow Valley as the route of the railroad stirred what had been an area rarely visited by anyone not of the Stoney Nation¹ into a bustling corridor of hard manual labour, smoke and flame which came to be described in one worker's memoir² as 'The Western Avernus'³. The railroad work involved the felling of millions of trees for sleepers and fuel, and the industrial activity (and carelessness, no doubt) sparked frequent wildfires which swept through parts of the valley, often leaving workers to drop tools and flee. Charles Shaw describes taking refuge for days on an island in the Bow River as a fire burned through the valley⁴. Chief John Snow (Intebeja Mani) of the Wesley Band of the Stoney Nation, the First Nation most intimately connected to the Bow River Valley and the Banff area, has written that the railway brought terrible changes for his people:

'Visiting sportsmen' came, too, decimating the animals we depended on for food. Forest fires ravaged the animals' natural habitat. Breeding sanctuaries along the foothills were destroyed by the inroads of 'civilization'. Other Indian tribes, who had once mainly hunted the buffalo, were now driven to hunt other animals in the mountain foothills of what had always been considered my tribe's territory⁵.

By the autumn of 1883, rail had been laid as far as the base of Cascade Mountain, near the present Banff airfield. Here the labourers laid out the 29th siding west of Medicine Hat. The small collection of tents and shacks which grew up rapidly around Siding 29 were the first dwellings in what would become the town of Banff.

Sir John A's determination to have the CPR built within a decade led to his decision to trust the project to private enterprise, which led to the rerouting of the line through the Bow River Valley. If not for Sir John A's push, if the government had continued the original northern route through the Yellowhead pass, Siding 29 would not have been established and the 'discovery' of the winter of 1883-84 would not have been made.

The 'Discovery'

As winter fell in 1883, three relative newcomers to Siding 29 – they had arrived only a few months earlier – decided to stay on in the mountains to prospect and hunt through the winter. These were Frank McCabe and the brothers William and Tom McCardell. One day, while exploring the base of Sulphur Mountain, they came upon a pool of hot water - the Basin - and a short distance away they found a hole in the ground from which steam was escaping. After some degree of work, one of the men descended a hastily made log ladder and by candlelight saw the glittering walls and dome of what is now known simply as the Cave.

As with almost everything in the landscape of the Americas, it was not the white men who discovered the Cave and Basin. Like the ochre deposits in the nearby Vermillion Pass which were 'discovered' in 1858 by James Hector (who apparently also 'discovered' the hot springs on Sulphur Mountain), the Cave and Basin Hot Springs were well known for their curative properties to the people of the Stoney Nation for generations. Chief John Snow writes: 'The sacred waters of the mountains – the mineral hot springs - were also important to maintaining our health and curing illness'. In fact, the white folk could never agree on which of them had 'discovered' the Springs or who was the first to build a bathhouse on the site. In the end, in July 1886, William Pearce, the Government's Superintendent of Mines determined at the end of a Commission of Inquiry over the many competing claims to ownership that each of the claimants should receive a cash settlement - differing amounts for each claimant – and that the Springs should then be termed property of the Crown. Later Pearce claimed that none of the claims had any legal merit. Whatever the legalities of the 'discovery', it was the adventure of the three railway workers on that day in late 1883 which brought the Cave and Basin to official attention.

The Cave and Basin now belonged to the Nation. What was the Nation to do with such things?

The National Park

Sir John A's career as prime minister, however his star rose or fell, was unified by a single-minded desire to make a nation out of the disparate mosaic of territories and colonies that, under his stewardship, had come to be called 'Canada'. His new Canadian Pacific Railroad tied the country's vast geography together. A protectionist tariff policy encouraged economic unity. The recent military success defeating the North West rebels united white English Canada in military pride, although also in a misplaced mistrust of First Nations people, a disaster for which Canadians continue to pay.

On 25 November, 1885, the prime minister issued Order in Council No 2197, declaring ten square miles around the Cave and Basin to 'be vested in the Crown' and 'reserved from sale, settlement or squatting'. This Order in Council, as well as spurring the conflict over 'discovery', is the founding document of Canada's National Park System, which has been, as MacDonald expected the Hot Springs to be, 'of great sanitary advantage to the public'. MacDonald now had another source of national pride, an undeveloped tourist attraction which promised to match or rival the spas of Europe. The summer after issuing his Order in Council, Sir John A travelled in person over the CPR and stopped in the newly named Banff to assess for himself the tourist potential of the area.

As the CPR was a tool in John A's national policy kit, the railroad would also be important in the development of the Cave and Basin, and the Park, as a source of national pride and 'a place of great resort'⁶. The new Park, and the Hot Springs at its heart, would put Canada on the map for the well-heeled of the world, and, more importantly, in the minds of Canadians themselves. And the CPR could be counted on to bring the well-heeled of the world (and Canadians who could afford the price) to Banff and to provide them with the expected wild mountain experience (without too much inconvenience).

In the summer of 1886, Banff was little more than a tent city. John A's government immediately ordered Dominion Land Surveyor George Stewart to survey not only the originally designated ten square miles, but 'all points of interest within reasonable bounds'. By the time the legislation enabling the Park passed into law in June 1887, a block of land 10 miles by 26 had been judged by Stewart as suitable. Included in the new Rocky Mountains Park was the town-site of Banff, which in a year had gone from a group of tents to a permanent tourist village of six hotels - including the CPR's Banff Springs Hotel - nine stores, two churches, a school and a post office. As well, there had been set aside a row of riverside villa lots below Bow Falls, one of which had been immediately leased (land ownership was not permitted in the Park) by Sir John A and Lady MacDonald. By the end of 1888, the Government had completed the first major piece of Park infrastructure: the stabilisation of the walls of the Cave and Basin pools with masonry, the installation of a system of pipes and valves to regulate water flow, and the construction of a bathhouse and a residence for a caretaker. These last two buildings are the originals of what became known as the Banff style of architecture, which came to be common throughout Canada's National Parks. What the 1887 Park Act had termed 'a public park and pleasure ground' was ready for visitors.

The Golden Age and Beyond

As the new century began, the Canadian Pacific Company branched out into the steamship business, providing the company, and Canada, with the means of profiting from every stage of the tourists' journey. European tourists boarded Canadian Pacific ships in European ports and then sailed to Canadian ports where they boarded Canadian Pacific trains and were accommodated in Canadian Pacific hotels, the most famous of which was the Banff Springs. From its beginning as a timber frame building, opened as a summer-only facility in 1888 to the present fairy-tale castle towering above the Bow River, the Hotel has been a dream destination, first for Victorian Europeans and Americans and later in the 20th Century, for young Japanese newly-weds.

In the beginning, the Cave and Basin and the Upper Hot Springs farther up the slopes of Sulphur Mountain were the primary reasons for a visit to Banff. But, with time, golf, mountaineering, and alpine and Nordic skiing have eclipsed the more sedentary pleasures of soaking in hot mineral baths. While the Upper Hot Springs continued to attract visitors, the Cave and Basin became more and more ignored by visitors and neglected by Parks Canada. In 1970 the public hot and cold pools were closed and then in 1977 the entire site except for the Cave was boarded up.

Under pressure from the people of Banff in anticipation of the Park's centennial in 1985, Parks Canada embarked on a major renovation, rehabilitating the cold pool for public swimming and reconstructing the original Basin bathhouse. Unfortunately, within a few years, cracks developed in the public pool and it was permanently closed. Today, the only option left in Banff for those wanting a natural mineral soak is to drive or climb up to the Upper Hot Springs.

It is unlikely that swimming will ever be allowed in the Cave and Basin hot pools again. These springs are the home of the largest remaining population of the Banff Springs Snail, an endangered species found only in the mineral springs of Sulphur Mountain. As with the dismantling of the nearby coal mining town of Bankhead in 1922, conservation in the Park has rightly trumped human use.

The Cave and Basin were not a part of any celebrations of the 125th anniversary of the Park. As part of another major renovation project, virtually the entire site is closed from June 2010 to November 2011. It is hoped that when this National Historic Site reopens, visitors will experience a fitting memorial to the wellspring of Canada's National Parks System and to the System of Parks which sprang from the Cave and Basin.

Epilogue: September, 2008

At the end of a quiet residential street on the south-western outskirts of the town of Banff, at the base of Sulphur Mountain stands a low Rundle-stone building. The Cave still smells of brimstone, and the blue light of the mountain sky still sends its shaft through the original hole to the waters below. The Basin looks unchanged from the 1920s, its bathhouse freshly painted. Now there is a small theatre inside the bathhouse where a film presents the history of the site. The main swimming pool, plagued with cracks, has been filled to a depth of about a foot. It is a reflecting pool now, and that is what visitors can be seen to do each day. They reflect on the past, on the information in the museum that has been installed in place of the old dressing rooms. Those who are old enough reflect on their memories of swimming under the mountain sunshine in strange-smelling water that did odd things to hair-colour.

None can come to the Cave and Basin National Historic Site without reflecting on the fact that the entire Canadian National Parks, National Historic Sites and National Marine Conservation Areas System, much of which is part of UNESCO's World Heritage Site programme, exists because three young men stumbled down a stinking hole in the autumn of 1883, and a curmudgeonly old prime minister recognised what they had found.