3 Best Sights in Banff National Park, Alberta

A remarkable 1903 building made chiefly of Douglas-fir log houses one of western Canada’s oldest natural history museums. From bees to bears, the collection, whose origins date to Chicago's fabled World's Columbian Exposition of 1893, encompasses more than 5,000 historical botanical and zoological specimens, many of them quite striking. In addition to providing the opportunity to get up close and personal with some of Banff's largest mammals—a grizzly bear, bison, mountain goats, and bighorn sheep among them—this unique museum offers a window into past generations' priorities regarding the natural world.

Guided tours of Brazeau Collieries Historic Mine Site offer a glimpse into an industrial coal mine operation and the lives of miners who worked and lived in this area. Two-hour guided tours are given of the mine, a Provincial and National Historic Resource, three times daily during the summer.

The small, stone weather station, a recognized heritage building, sits on top of an exposed ridge at the peak of Sulphur Mountain. It was built in 1902 and Norman Sanson was in charge of the weather station from 1902--1945. He summited the peak more than a thousand times in all seasons and his weather reports were published in the Banff newspaper under the pseudonym "Seer Altitudinous." He was 84 years old when he retired from the job and the peak was renamed Sanson's Peak in his honor in 1948. Nearby is a concrete foundation and a bronze plaque recognizing Sulphur Mountain Cosmic Ray Station National Historic Site. Between 1957 and 1978, geophysicists studied cosmic rays and space particles entering the atmosphere from the station on top of Sulphur Mountain. Today you can hike up as Sanson did, or ride the gondola.