HISTORY .
In protecting the land, Alberta has also preserved a wealth of history. The settling of Western Canada marks one of the worlds great migrations and the transformation of the region into an agricultural resource frontier (Bone 2002). Albertans enjoy a rich and varied heritage. From the early 1800's, when native people and fur traders used parts of this route to cross the mountain barrier, to immigrants from Eastern and Western Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the United States Later. They have all made their own unique contributions to the province's economic and cultural growth, while retaining much of their own ethnicity, language and history. .
In 1885, Canada achieved the impossible, completing its coast-to-coast railway. The arrival of the train brought tourists, resorts, and a lifeline to the newly-established Rocky Mountains Park (now Banff National Park), this young country's first national park. The creation of Glacier and Jasper National Parks soon followed, as more and more visitors discovered the beauty of this mountain landscape. For a brief period, lumber and mining industries flourished here. Banff's Bankhead and Jasper's Pocahontas coal mines boomed in the early 1900's. The ruins of self guiding trails can still be visible today. By 1930, a new National Parks Act set resource protection as the parks' priority, ending such industrial activities. .
During the Great Depression of the 1930's, abandoned farmhouses were a sadly common sight in the province. Much has changed since then. Government support programs, advanced agricultural techniques and a constantly improving transportation system have helped make Alberta's farmers among the most productive in the world. The first Banff-Jasper road was built as a relief-work project during the depression years of the 1930's, however, the present Icefields Parkway was completed in the early 1960's. Place names along the parkway recall the different groups of people that have visited the area.