Jasper House
Jasper House, now a national historic site just outside Jasper, Alberta, was a trading
post in the
Rocky Mountains, located on the
Athabasca River at the intersection of two routes through the mountains: one through Yellowhead Pass
and the other through Athabasca Pass.
1Aboriginal peoples trekked by this area, no doubt long before settlers arrived, while
on the historic route from “Snake Indian Pass” to the interior of present-day
British Columbia.
2Jasper House was established in 1813 as a provision-depot for fur-traders; it was
named “Rocky Mountain House”, initially, which confused it with another post of the
same name on the
Saskatchewan River.
3 Soon, it was named after the first post-master to reside there, Jasper Hawes.
4Its first iteration was built near the north end of Brûlé Lake, then between 1929
and 1830 the HBC built a second house at the north end of Jasper Lake.5 The famous artist Paul Kane visited Jasper House in 1846, when Colin Fraser was in
command.6 Apparently, Kane arrived there at night, feeling more dead than alive.
7 He then sat before a blazing fire
and ate five or six pounds of mountain sheep,
which he found delicious.8
Kane’s journal describes Jasper House as follows:
[...] three miserable log huts. The dwelling-house is composed of two rooms, of about
fourteen to fifteen feet square each. One of them is used by all comers and goers:
Indians, voyageurs, and traders, men, women, and children being huddled together indiscriminately.”9
The HBC officially closed the house in 1884, and it was destroyed in 1909, when surveyors
for the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway used it for parts to build rafts.10
- 1. National Historic Sites in the Mountain National Parks, Parks Canada.
- 2. Ibid.
- 3. Jasper National Park of Canada, Parks Canada.
- 4. Ibid.
- 5. Ibid.
- 6. Ibid.
- 7. Diane F. Eaton, Paul Kane's Great Nor-West (University of British Columbia: UBC Press, 1996), 71.
- 8. Ibid.
- 9. Ibid.
- 10. Jasper National Park of Canada, Parks Canada.