A hole in the rock with a hot spring in it, and the reason Canada has national parks
Three men working for the Canadian Pacific, Frank McCabe and the brothers Tom and William McCardell, climbed down through a hole in the rock on a felled tree in 1883 and found a hot spring in a cave. What they had actually found was the start of the national parks. They tried to claim it, the claim got messy, and in 1885 an order-in-council reserved ten square miles around the springs, which is the genesis of Canada’s national park system and became Banff. The bathhouse and the 1916 pool are restored and there is a tunnel through to the grotto, but nobody swims here any more: the pool stopped operating in 1994, because the warm water holds the Banff Springs snail, listed as endangered in 2000 and found in these springs and almost nowhere else. Look, do not touch the water, and understand that a whole park system started in this hole in the ground.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
