Banff

Sister cities

• Unzen

History

The site of Banff has been continually inhabited by First Nations for at least 10,000 years. The town's location was the site of an Interior Salishan settlement, which was both a wintering village and a trading post. Nakoda and Blackfoot peoples have also, at various points, lived at and near the present location. The town of Banff was first established in the 1880s after the transcontinental railway was built through the Bow Valley. In 1883, three Canadian Pacific Railway workers stumbled upon a series of natural hot springs on the side of Sulphur Mountain. In 1885, Canada established a federal reserve of around the Cave and Basin hot springs and began promoting the area as an international resort and spa as a way to support the new railway. In 1887, the reserve area was increased to and named "Rocky Mountain Park". This was the beginning of Canada's National Park system. The Banff townsite was developed near the railway station as a service centre for tourists visiting the park. Services, such as St George-in-the-Pines church, were constructed through the late 19th century. It was administered by the Government of Canada's national parks system until 1990 when the Town of Banff became the only incorporated municipality within a Canadian national park. An internment camp was set up at Banff and Castle Mountain in Dominion Park from July 1915 to July 1917, mostly imprisoning Ukrainian immigrants. Designated enemy aliens under Canada's 1914 War Measures Act, enemy aliens were interned during World War I as prisoners of war. The prisoners of the internment camp were used to build the infrastructure of the national park. In 1985, the United Nations declared Banff National Park, as one of the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks, a UNESCO world heritage site. In 1976, the…

Geography

The town is surrounded by mountains, notably Mount Rundle, Sulphur Mountain, Mount Norquay, and Cascade Mountain, and is situated above Bow Falls near the confluence of the Bow River and Spray River. Soils are calcareous and usually imperfectly to poorly drained in their natural state with textures from very fine sandy loam to silty clay loam. Banff experiences a subarctic climate (Köppen climate classification Dfc) that borders on a humid continental climate (Köppen Dfb). Winter temperatures range from an average low of to an average high of . Summer temperatures in the warmest month are an average high of and an average low of . Snow has been recorded in all months of the year. The annual snowfall averages . The highest temperature ever recorded was on June 29, 2021, during the 2021 Western North America heat wave.

Most-observed species

• Common Raven

  Corvus corax Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  6,241
• Black-billed Magpie

  Pica hudsonia (Sabine, 1823) · Aves
  6,222
• Mountain Chickadee

  Poecile gambeli (Ridgway, 1886) · Aves
  5,429
• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  5,019
• Dark-eyed Junco

  Junco hyemalis (Linnaeus, 1758) · Aves
  4,056
• Mallard

  Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  4,042
• Yellow-rumped Warbler

  Setophaga coronata (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  3,421
• Red-breasted Nuthatch

  Sitta canadensis Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  2,985

Most recent

• M 4 — 2026-10-16
  31 km NNE of Banff, Canada
• M 3.7 — 2025-01-26
  58 km NNW of Banff, Canada
• M 4.1 — 2021-02-14
  5 km N of Banff, Canada
• M 3.1 — 2014-10-16
  1 km SW of Banff, Canada
• M 2.9 — 2011-04-10
  16 km SE of Invermere, Canada
• M 3.6 — 2002-07-28
  29 km SSE of Canmore, Canada