Crowsnest Pass
Rivers born in Canada’s Rockies carved passes eastward to Hudson Bay or westward to the Pacific. This one was long used by Indians, but not shown on maps until the Palliser Expedition of 1860, and then only from hearsay. Michael Phillipps blazed a trail in 1873. He was the first white man to cross the Canadian Rockies from west to east through an unexplored pass.
The Ktunaxa (Kootenay First Nation) name for Crowsnest Pass is yakyaqanqat which means “way through the mountains.” They have known of the route through the Rockies for generations and used it seasonally to go to the eastern side of the mountains (now in Alberta) to hunt bison.
The first written record of a European crossing through the Rockies along Crowsnest Pass was in 1873, when Michael Phillipps was prospecting for gold in Elk River country and was “disgusted at finding nothing but coal". The route that Phillipps pioneered was a difficult one as it was steep and often blocked by dense cedar swamps. A trail was cleared through the pass and bridges were built, then railway construction began when the Canadian Pacific Railway, by the Mining Act of 1890, built lines into the East Kootenays.
There has been much debate about the origin of the term “Crowsnest”. The Akriggs in their major work, British Columbia Place Names, say it derives from when a band of Crow Indians camped here after making a horse-stealing raid into Blackfoot territory. The Blackfeet caught them by surprise in their “nest” or camp and massacred them. A map drawn in 1859 by the Palliser Expedition shows “lodge des Corbeaux” (lodge of the Crows) at the head of the Crow River, while an 1860 version of the map shows Crow Nest river and pass. Captain John Palliser, the first European to learn about the pass (but who did not traverse it), himself referred to it as “British Kutanie pass.” Some people believe that the name comes simply from the nests of crows found in that region. Whatever its origin, the term Crowsnest Pass was well established by 1897 when the Canadian Pacific Railway built the Crowsnest line.
Crowsnest Pass was a main source of coal for many years, and towns on both sides of the Alberta-British Columbia boundary such as Coleman, Blairmore, Frank, Crowsnest, Natal, Michel and Fernie prospered. The decline of coal as a fuel combined with rising costs caused hardships and forced mines to close. In 1964, the Kaiser Corporation started stripmining, and moved the coal centre to the instant town of Sparwood.
