With some of the finest and wildest scenery in the Rockies, Jasper is the largest (4,199 square miles; 10,875.4 square kilometers) of the Rocky Mountain national parks, less frequented by visitors than Banff, but with equally spectacular displays of mountain, lakes, and forest.
Jasper National Park was founded (originally as a forest park) in 1907. The successful establishment of Banff National Park several years earlier had demonstrated the winning combination of railroad construction, tourism, and conservation, and served as a model when the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway began to lay the tracks of a second transcontinental line through the mountains. The railroad’s alignment, previously surveyed, then rejected by the Canadian Pacific Railway, followed the old route used by fur traders and gold seekers along the Athabasca River and its tributary, the Miette. The route crossed the Continental Divide at the lowest pass along its entire length, the Yellowhead Pass.
Both the national park and the townsite, the only settlement within its boundary, were named for Jasper House, a North West Company depot on Brule Lake.
