Finally! A lively and original history of Jasper National Park by a leading Parks Canada historian.
Lavishly illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs and maps, Jasper: The Park, The Place, and The People begins in the 1800s when the area was the domain of hunters and trappers and moves on to describe the transformation wrought by the building of two railways through the area at the beginning of the twentieth century to the jewel in the Canadian wilderness crown that is Jasper Park today.
It was the railway construction that inspired the creation of the park in 1907. For the next forty years Jasper was the sleeping giant of Canada’s national parks. Large and attractive, it was also among the least visited of the national parks. These attributes enabled it to retain its rustic wilderness mystique well into the 1950s. It was renowned for its backcountry trails, its legendary horse outfitters (whose stories are told here), and its picturesque big game. But as the biggest of the national parks south of 60, it shared many of the typical problems of those parks in the twentieth century. Issues of game and forest management, road building and tourism—central topics in Jasper’s history—were also main topics in the history of the broader national parks program.
The completion of the Icefields Parkway and the Yellowhead Highway brought automobile tourists to the park in greater numbers through the 1950s and 1960s. Today, as one of Canada’s most famous attractions, tourists and locals continue to explore its many natural splendours. Taylor’s Jasper will also allow them to explore the park’s human history as well.
Jim Taylor received his Ph.D. from Carleton University and has been a Parks Canada historian since 1974. He is the author of Negotiating the Past: The Making of Canada’s National Historic Parks and Sites (McGill-Queen’s, 1990). He lives in Calgary.
|