Fairmont Banff Springs

About this audio guide

This guide to the Fairmont Banff Springs in Banff traces the hotel to eighteen eighty-three, when three Canadian Pacific Railway workers climbed into a hidden hot spring on Sulphur Mountain and set off a dispute that helped create Canada's first national park. It follows railway manager William Van Horne as he commissions a grand hotel to lure travelers across an ocean, then returns west in eighteen eighty-seven to see it taking shape. You'll also hear how the glacier-carved valley outside became the view his gamble rested on.