Town of Banff Fact Sheet > Fast Facts and Research

Fast Facts

Banff Avenue looking South toward Sulphur Mountain with the Banff High School field in the foreground.

Banff Alberta Canada
Photo Credit - Travel Alberta

The Town of Banff incorporated as a municipality in 1990, was the first municipality in Canada to be incorporated inside a national park. The only other national park community in Canada is the Municipality of Jasper, in Jasper National Park, formed in 2001.

The Setting

The Banff townsite covers 3.93 square kilometres (2.5 square miles).

Townsite boundaries are fixed by federal law. The municipality may not expand its land base.

The town of Banff is located inside Banff National Park, Canada’s first and the world's third national park. The Park itself is 6,641 square kilometres (2,564 square miles); 96 percent of the park is wilderness.

Banff National Park is one of four adjacent national parks designated as the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Population

The town of Banff has 8,721 residents: 7437 permanent and 1,284 temporary (employed a minimum of 30 days) (2007 census).

2007 Banff Census (

PDF - 650 kb)

Residents of Banff must meet a “need to reside” requirement, regulated by the federal government.

Learn more about the need to reside requirement

Economy

Tourism is the town’s economic driver. More than 3 million people visit Banff National Park every year, and almost all of them visit the Town of Banff.

The federal government limits the amount of space available for commercial development in national parks. Commercial space in the town of Banff is capped at 353,000 square metres (3.8 million square feet), or about 10% of the total area of the townsite.