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Glacier-capped mountains, sapphire lakes and enough pine-scented forest to fill a country the size of Switzerland: the Canadian Rockies have been drawing intrepid travellers to their rugged, lofty peaks for over a century.

Outdoor enthusiasts congregate in Banff, the commercial heart of a region that offers visitors both winter skiing and summer hiking in healthy abundance. If it’s the call of the wild you’re after, look no further.

But underneath this land of big skies and spectacularly carved mountain ridges lies a region rich in pioneering history and punctuated by small pockets of a half-forgotten native culture.

The earliest human habitation can be traced back 10,000 years – courtesy of the Buffalo Nations Museum in Banff - to the ancestors of the Cree, Blackfoot and Kootenay tribes, native people linked intrinsically to the land who conquered the hostile terrain of these mountains and lived harmoniously with the elk, bears and deer that populated their scenic slopes. The museum’s inter-tribal board of directors still sponsors annual “Tribal days” in celebration of its tribal culture.

And then in 1807, the first European contact: explorers trekking westwards across the prairies, led by Hudson Bay Company cartographer, David Thompson. With native help, Thompson fought his way up to the blustery heights of Howse Pass, thus becoming the first known white explorer to cross the Rockies into present-day British Columbia.

A steady trickle of fur traders and itinerant carpet-baggers quickly followed. This became an all-out stampede in the 1860s, when the discovery of gold in the Cariboo and Kootenay regions of British Columbia sparked a get-rich-quick hysteria not seen since the days of the Californian 49ers.

As ever, the boom-bust economy of the mining industry came with a predetermined sell-by date. The rush subsided as quickly as it had arrived, leaving a plethora of time-capsule “ghost towns”. Two of these, Barkerville in the Cariboo and Fort Steele in the Kootenays, have been converted into valuable modern-day heritage parks that offer visitors an authentic glimpse into life on the old frontier through dramatic street theatre.

Gold aside, it was the coming of the railway in the 1880s that, more than anything, fashioned the fate of the Rockies - and, in doing so, the destiny of the Canadian nation itself.

Ranking alongside Stonehenge, the Great Wall of China and the mythical Pyramids of Giza, the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) between 1881 and 1885 resides quite deservedly as one of history’s greatest feats of human engineering.

Present-day visitors can relive the glory days of the line at two excellent railway museums in Revelstoke and Cranbrook. Even better, enjoy the ride itself in one of a selection of tourist trains that ply the old route across Kicking Horse Pass between Vancouver and Calgary.

First commissioned in the 1870s with the promise of linking newly inaugurated British Columbia to the industrial east, the CPR project encountered a multitude of problems from the outset. But under the auspices of director and entrepreneur, William Van Horne, a pioneering spirit of bloody-minded persistence prevailed. Spitting in the face of countless physical adversities, the last railway stake was driven into the mountain earth at Craigellachie, British Columbia, on November 7th 1885. The line opened – to much acclaim - six years ahead of schedule. The era of Tourism had begun.

Journeying through the Rockies today – be it by train, car or bicycle – is a jaw-dropping experience. Few places on earth have so successfully managed to amalgamate the remote with the reachable and package it in a way that is so environmentally congruous.

Valley by valley the vistas gradually unfold: eagles soar past precipitous cliffs; gorges are sliced by boiling rivers and rough-and-ready one-horse frontier towns whose names count the passing of time like chapters in a book.

“If we can’t export the scenery, we’ll import the tourists”, an ambitious Van Horne famously stated in a bid to raise money for the CPR’s outstanding loans in 1886. His solution: a series of luxurious castle-like hotels designed to blend in spectacularly with the surrounding mountains. The flagship of these was the Banff Hot Springs Hotel, which first opened in 1888 and still operates today under banner of the Fairmont Group.

Buried not far away is the liquid gold upon which the present-day Rockies National Park was built. In 1883, three railway workers accidentally stumbled across natural Hot Springs in a cave close to the site of present-day Banff. This led to the unearthing of a health source that had been familiar to and used by the Stoney Indians for centuries.

Exhausted after 50 years of the ceaseless push to the west, the comfort-seeking colonists couldn’t get enough of it. Spa seekers, like the goldminers before them, arrived in their droves. Eventually, in 1885, the area around the springs was brought under national protection. Two years later Canada’s first and the world’s third national park was created to incorporate Banff Upper Springs and the surrounding mountains.

Visit today and the spa spirit still lives on, hikers and skiers relaxing in large outside pools, soaking up water and view in equal measure - 2,564 square miles of some of the most visually stunning and viscerally breathtaking wilderness on earth.

In Canada the concept of scale, particularly to Lilliputian Europeans, takes on a whole new dimension. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by a surfeit of wild and adventurous possibilities. A day-hike is perhaps the best introduction and a number of good starting points can be sought out in pleasant Canmore, Banff’s rather more understated neighbour.

For those unable to ply themselves away from the luxurious trappings of the spa and hotel scene, there’s always the intriguing Banff Park Museum of natural history; an architectural gem in its own rite and, with 5,000 specimens of indigenous flora and fauna on display, a living microcosm of the area at large.

But stay here too long and the call of the wild will eventually take hold - tempting, teasing, enticing and inviting - guiding you mysteriously along the Rocky Mountain pathways to the ethereal whispers of centuries past. Whatever you do, don’t resist.

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