Likewise, James Sinclair led Red River colonists westward and Pierre-Jean De Smet travelled eastward, through the area.

While they intended on bottling the spring water, its remote location prevented such development and Stuart offered to sell the property in 1909 to the Canadian Pacific Railway Company for $3000.

Though the offer was not accepted, railway engineer Robert Randolph Bruce recognized the potential for a road through the area and advocated for it in 1910 with CPR president Thomas Shaughnessy and Premier Richard McBride, as a commercial link for the province to Calgary and eastern Canada.

In May 1916 the Minister of the Interior, William James Roche, began negotiations, and the subsequent minister agreed with the provincial counterparts to the Banff-Windermere Agreement, that the federal government would complete the road within 4 years of the end of the Great War, and maintain it thereafter, in exchange for the agreed-upon land to be used for park purposes and a resolution to jurisdictional matters in the other federal parks in BC.

Development of the hot springs began in earnest after a British medical journal suggested, and a 1914 chemical analysis by McGill University confirmed, the presence of radium within the water.

Stuart travelled to England promoting the "Kootenay Radium Natural Springs Limited" and recruited the paralysed St John Harmsworth to visit.

With his agent unable to reach him, or Stuart ignoring the offer, the government expropriated the land, in 1922, with a settlement, after numerous hearings right up to the Supreme Court, of $40,000 in 1927.

The ochre was collected by the Ktunaxa people for use as pigments and the iron oxide was commercially mined for use in paint manufacturing for nearly two decades until the park was established in 1920.

Numa Falls is a short drive south of Marble Canyon and is accessible directly by Highway 93 which cuts through the park.

The Rockwall trail is a multi-day hike along the limestone cliff eastern escarpment of the Vermilion Range that continues into the Yoho National Park.

[8] The park is centered around the 94 km stretch of the Highway 93, from Radium Hot Springs to the provincial border at the Vermilion Pass.

The geology of the park is dominated by mountains made up of exposed faulted sedimentary rock and valleys containing glacial till deposited in the Pleistocene.

Just outside the northwestern corner of the park, there is an igneous intrusion known as the Ice River Complex containing deposits of sodalite, an ornamental stone.

The park has many Cambrian strata of oceanic sedimentary origin that shed insight into the explosive radiation of multicellular life on Earth.

[13] The park experiences a humid continental climate (Dfb) which is characterized by brief, cool summers and long snowy winters, but is generally drier than the areas to the west due to the Kootenay Ranges capturing moisture.

Combined with the Continental Divide protecting it from the brunt of the arctic air flow, the park experiences a more mild climate than Banff.

[14] Based on the climate and geography, the park has been divided into different ecoregions: Montane, Subalpine and Alpine, which consequently affect vegetation and wildlife.

The Montane ecoregions are at lower elevations, such as at the park's west gate and the valley of the Kootenay River, and experience between 300 and 600 mm of precipitation each year, 30 to 45% of which falls as snow.

The subalpine ecoregion, such as the valley of the Vermilion River and at Floe Lake and Marble Canyon, experience cooler and moister weather, with mean annual temperatures less than 1 degrees Celsius and about 800 mm of precipitation, over half of which is snow.

An emerging drier climate, and forest fires, are resulting in the Interior Douglas-fir biogeoclimatic zone expanding into the park, with its more dominant Douglas fir, ponderosa pine and rocky mountain juniper tree stands.

Timber wolves, lynxes, wolverines, minks, fishers, badgers, river otters, skunks and long and short-tailed weasels have also been identified but are not common.

Under their Statement of Significance, UNESCO states "With rugged mountain peaks, icefields and glaciers, alpine meadows, lakes, waterfalls, extensive karst cave systems and deeply incised canyons, the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks possess exceptional natural beauty, attracting millions of visitors annually.