History
Permanent settlement first came to the Jasper area in the winter of 1810-11. The great explorer and trader David Thomson left William Henry at Old Fire Point (just outside the present townsite), while he and his companions pushed on up the valley to blaze a trail over the Athabasca Pass that would be used for more than fifty years by traders crossing the Rockies. In the meantime, Henry established Henry House , the first permanent European habitation in the Rockies (though its exact location has been lost). Two years later the North West Company established Jasper House at the eastern edge of the park's present boundary. Named after Jasper Hawes, a long-time company clerk there, it moved closer to Jasper Lake in 1829, when the North West and Hudson's Bay companies were amalgamated. By 1880, and the collapse of the fur trade, the post had closed. By 1900, the entire region boasted just seven homesteads. Like other parks and their townsites, Jasper traces its real origins to the coming of the railway in the late nineteenth century. The Canadian Pacific had brought boom to Banff and Yoho in 1885 when it spurned a route through the Jasper region in favour of a more southerly route. The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway hoped for similar successes in attracting visitors when it started to push its own route west in 1902, and the Jasper Forest Park was duly created in 1908. The government bought up all land locally except for the homestead of Lewis Swift, which remained in stubborn private hands until 1962: the town is now "run" by Parks Canada. By 1911 a tent city known as Fitzhugh , named after the company's vice president, had grown up on Jasper's present site, and the name "Jasper" was adopted when the site was officially surveyed. Incredibly, a second railway, the Canadian Northern (CNR), was completed almost parallel to the Grand Trunk line in 1913, the tracks at some points running no more than a few metres apart. Within just three years, the line's redundancy became obvious and consolidation took place west of Edmonton, with the most favourably graded portions of the two routes being adopted. The ripped-up rails were then shipped to Europe and used in World War I and Jasper became a centre of operations for the lines in 1924, greatly boosting its importance and population. The first tourist accommodation here was ten tents on the shores of Lac Beauvert, replaced in 1921 by the first Jasper Lake Lodge , forerunner of the present hotel. The first road link from Edmonton was completed in 1928. Official national-park designation came in 1930. Today Jasper's still a rail town, with around a third of the population employed by the CNR.
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