History
Human habitation in this area can be traced back to 10,700 years BP with the retreat of the last great glaciation, and it is unlikely that the hot springs escaped their notice. The first recorded reference to hot springs here is by James Hector of the Palliser Expedition in 1859, followed by Joe Healey in 1874 who found the Cave and Basin site in 1875. But it was Canadian Pacific Railway workers William McCardell and Frank McCabe who brought national attention to the Cave and Basin. In 1883 they descended through the skylight entrance into the cave using a felled tree, and the following year constructed a small cabin nearby with the intention of commercializing the Cave and Basin site. Conflicting claims by other parties prompted intervention by the Canadian government headed by John A. Macdonald and in 1885 an order-in-council reserved 10 square miles (26 km2) around the Cave and Basin, the Banff Hot Springs Reserve. This was the genesis of Canada's National Parks system. In 1886 the Canadian government held an inquiry into the various private claims to settle on compensation.
In 1886 an artificial tunnel was driven into the Cave and Basin to aid visitation. In 1912 bottled water from the Cave and Basin site was sold for its alleged curative powers. In 1914 a naturally heated swimming pool was opened to the public and continued to operate until 1994.
The Cave and Basin was formally declared a national historic site in 1981. Canada's national parks system celebrated its centennial in 1985, on the anniversary of the order-in-council that established the original reserve around the Cave and Basin.
Read more about this topic: Cave And Basin National Historic Site
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“While the Republic has already acquired a history world-wide, America is still unsettled and unexplored. Like the English in New Holland, we live only on the shores of a continent even yet, and hardly know where the rivers come from which float our navy.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am ashamed to see what a shallow village tale our so-called History is. How many times must we say Rome, and Paris, and Constantinople! What does Rome know of rat and lizard? What are Olympiads and Consulates to these neighboring systems of being? Nay, what food or experience or succor have they for the Esquimaux seal-hunter, or the Kanaka in his canoe, for the fisherman, the stevedore, the porter?”
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“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)