The word Yoho is a Cree expression of amazement or awe, and it is an apt description for the park's spectacular landscape of massive ice fields and mountain peaks, which rank among the highest in the Canadian Rockies.

[5] Before the establishment of the park, the Ktunaxa primarily used the area—specifically, Kicking Horse Pass—to cross the Rockies in order to access bison hunting grounds on the eastern side of the mountains.

[6][7] The park was created following a trip by Prime Minister John A. Macdonald and his wife Agnes through the Rockies on the newly completed Canadian Pacific Railway, Canada's first transcontinental.

In particular, the Burgess Shale, in Yoho National Park, has among the world's richest deposits of rare[further explanation needed] fossils.

In the southeastern corner of the park is an igneous intrusion known as the Ice River Complex containing deposits of sodalite, an ornamental stone.