Touring Southern Alberta – 4. Frank Slide

We travel along Highway 3 west often.  At Fort McLeod, the road splits – Highway 2 goes north towards Calgary but Highway 3 is a major road to the mountains and beyond to British Columbia.

Every time we travel this, we see singular wind turbines sitting out there in the middle of the tranquil farm landscape and then we pass by the first wind farm built along the ridge.

 

I have always been fascinated by dead trees and the tree that marks the approach to the Crowsnest Pass is my favourite. 

They did threaten to remove it but the local folks protested and it now stands there rooted in concrete.

  

The Crowsnest Pass area was a magnet for immigrants – jobs abundant in the coal mines. 

Small mining towns sat along the track that carried the coal trains. The town of Frank sat at the base of the Turtle Mountain. Everyone knew the Mountain was unstable but it was rich in the coal that supported the company and, in turn, provided work for so many of the people who lived there.

In the early morning hours of April 29, 1903, the greatest landslide in North American history happened. Eighty-two million tonnes (90 million tons) of limestone - slid down the north slope of Turtle Mountain.

In 100 seconds: at least 76 people were buried alive under tons of massive limestone boulders; three-quarters of the homes in Frank were crushed like balsa wood; over a mile of the Canadian Pacific Railroad was completely destroyed; and a river became a lake. http://www3.sympatico.ca/goweezer/canada/frank.htm

 

Frank Slide Interpretive Centre does a good job of following the development of the coal communities in and around the Pass and the Frank Slide disaster.