View northeast from Tunnel Mountain across campgrounds and the former meadows near Siding 29 along the railway near Banff townsite (Mountain Legacy Project photographs).
In the 1880s this was a a vast area of grasslands, shrublands and young pine forests maintained by Indigenous burning. The fires occurred when grasses were cured in spring and fall, and had low to moderate intensity. Over the next 150 years mature forests of white spruce and lodgepole pine increased in cover. These are most prone to burn during mid-summer droughts with very high intensity.
