The Deadliest Rockslide in North America - The Frank Rockslide of 1903

This is a Carnage Valley, this huge field of hard limestone rock is what remains of the

deadliest

rockslide

in North America after 110 million tons broke loose from the unstable Turtle Mountain, sweeping the mountainside. mountain and hitting part of the mining town of Frank Alberta. We are exploring the disaster site seeing what remains of the once booming city. There is the actual entrance to the mine that was blocked off and visiting the Frank Slide Interpretive Center to see what stories we can learn and remember. I have explored several ghost towns. throughout North America, but the story of this town is among the most dramatically gripping I have ever seen, along with the Centralia Pennsylvania underground fires, this is Frank Alberta's town in the Midwest of Canada and this is the story of the terrible Frank.

rockslide

of

1903

, the town of Frank is located on what is called The Crow's Nest Pass, named after Crows Nest Mountain to the

north

, before the late 19th century the pass was nothing more than a pass in mostly uninhabited and used simply as trail access between the populated grasslands of Alberta to the east and the booming mining operations in British Columbia to the west.

I should note that at that time Alberta was not even officially a Canadian province, but was part of the Northwest Territories. Now the western mines were producing enormous quantities of ore. but because of the Rocky Mountains, most of the ore had to be shipped east via American rails to the south to assert Canada's presence in these western territories. The Canadian Pacific Railroad built the Crow Nest route which runs from Lethbridge Alberta across the pass to Cout Landing in British. Columbia with its first rail service in 1898, this new railroad provided the foundation of the infrastructure needed to explore the possibilities of opening the passage for mining and this brought a wave of prospectors to the pass.

The first real settlement within the pass was the town of Nota where a man named Henry Peler undertook prospecting and found coal deposits at the base of Turtle Mountain, east of Blairmore, and quickly sold his claim to an American businessman named Samuel Gabo. Mr. Gabo and his financial backer, a Montana businessman named Henry L. Frank formed the Canadian American Coke and Coke Company and opened a mine on the claim in the spring of 1901, quickly developing a small settlement with 25 cabins, a boarding house and office buildings, all to support the new mine. The mine was named Frank and the town was named Frank after Henry Frank and to be completely Frank, the town received an unfair advantage.

The duo poured all kinds of money into the city to draw businesses and residents away from nearby cities to compete and basically turn Frank into the leading settlement of the past. While most mining towns grew organically thanks to the prosperity of the Gabo Mine and Frank wanted to revive Frank's town by throwing a grand opening ceremony for it, the Canadian Pacific Railroad really loved the idea of ​​this town celebration offering two special excursion drainages that ended up bringing about 1,400 people. Henry Frank, the man of the hour, actually ended up missing his connection while coming from Montana and, in true Frank fashion, rented his own extra private train to take him the rest of the way which ended up beating most.

For hikers, the city's festivities were a joyous occasion with concerts, sporting events, competitions and a great party for all who attended free of charge. Some of the 25 cabins were opened to attract families to move to the town and to the mining tunnels that were already The excavations were also opened for tours to impress visitors. It worked after the event, people flocked to the city, which reached a population of over 600 people by the spring of

1903

. It was claimed that Frank would be the Pittsburgh of Canada, a comparison that is virtually lost today, but at that time moment Pittsburgh Pennsylvania was one of the richest industrial cities in America and the envy of any optimistic small town, hotels, restaurants, shops and neighborhoods grew rapidly as Frank carved out a place for himself on the city's

north

eastern pass is life.

Stone Range with Robertson Peak dominating the landscape in that direction towards the South Towers, the mountain where most of the town's mining work was carried out, this is a tall, ominous mountain known as Turtle Mountain which blocks the sun at the end In the early evening each day, while Turtle Mountain was rich in coal at its base, its presence on boats in the past made people uncomfortable, as both Natives and settlers alike felt unsafe around it, the local Blackfoot tribe referred to it as the Moving Mountain and refused to camp near it whenever they traveled through the pass;

In fact, when explorer David Thompson's expedition reached the pass in 1800, they must have been overheated by warnings from the native population, as they ultimately refused to enter the pass and took a different path. One of his cautions was not mere superstition, although the claim that the mountain's movements probably referred to earthquakes and tremors or even the slow settling of the mountain over time, as it turns out that Turtle Mountain itself was structurally unstable and had formed over the course of dozens of years. Millions of years ago we're about to go geological here, but it's important to the story.

The top layer was composed of earth, rock and softer shell, and chipped by seams of coal, underneath was a thick layer of heavy limestone as the limestone plates pushed. Together, one of them was forced upward as the top layer of soil was worn away. The limestone plate overlapped the layer of soil that was on top of the other plate. Turtle Mountain was forming, but at the same time glacial movements followed by the later Crows Nest River eroded away. The northern base of the mountain slowly removed the soft layer of matter that the top layer of limestone rested on, eventually the heavy limestone hung precariously as a steep cliff loomed over the city, above that cracks forming in The top of the mountain allowed rain.

Water and snow melt to seep into the mountain, further undermining its stability. This rockslide took almost 100 million years to develop and the timing was so perfect that it happened less than 2 years after the city appeared there, the mine was at the base of the mountain and little by little it further eroded the foundations now, in 1903, the city's population was more than 600 inhabitants and it was full of life. A walk down Frank's main shopping street, Dominion Avenue, would show you how lively that city was becoming in the South. End of Dominion Avenue was a boarding house one of the first accommodations built by The Mining Company heading north after passing several houses we reached a hotel, a bar and the office of the town newspaper the Frank Sentinel the newspaper was founded shortly after the town itself town and was known for its frequent spelling errors hardware stores tinkers a pharmacy and then the Frank Café the café advertised its homemade bread two hotels were on the last block before the Canadian Pacific Railroad the Frank Hotel and the Imperial Hotel the hotel Frank rather lavishly called itself a resort, while the Imperial Hotel boasted steam heating, electric lighting and a dining room that could not be surpassed in the entire West, a rather bold claim when the Bamp Spring Hotel to the north It was practically within earshot, although in 1903 it seemed smaller than in reality.

It does today, but it is still impressive and probably more impressive than the Imperial Hotel. Outside the dining room of the Imperial Hotel, the Frank Slide Interpretation Center has a plate on display today, apart from the street itself, there is absolutely nothing left to show us the center of the city. that were once here, all the buildings were removed, other new stands in their place and even Dominion Avenue was renamed Simply 152nd Street. Dominion Avenue ended at the railroad tracks and almost at this site the CPR was building a new, larger train station for the city. of Frank and was only partially completed at the time of the rockfall, until now the town had been using a small shack as a station, but this certainly wouldn't do for a town that was quickly becoming the center of commerce and industry in the area, so this is the approximate location of the train station, the track is still here and active, but the station is long gone.

Another railroad construction project at the time was a branch line leaving the railroad east of Frank and heading into the mountains toward a new In a settlement called Lil, about 4 miles north, they had been destroying the railroad bed and They were beginning to lay tracks in this area of ​​the line. By this time, less than two years after opening, the Frank Mine had made excellent progress in extracting coal from The Mountain, encouraged by the Canadian Pacific Railroad's eager demand for coal, working around the clock, sometimes shipping tons of coal per day. By early 1903, miners had dug 1 and A2 km or almost a mile beneath the mountain because the way the mountain was formed meant that the coal seam that was horizontal at the entrance to the mine began to curve. upward as they went deeper into the mountain, so workers began digging larger vertical chambers, some of these chambers were 120 M or almost 400 feet high.

The harder the miners worked, the more they undermined an already unstable mountain. In the months before the disaster, coal was said to be being mined. The tremors on the mountain released several tons of coal, but that is nothing compared to the compression as the mountain slowly sank. He sank in on himself and moved more and more. The frames inside the mine buckled and coal came out from among the heavier rocks. Still, the warning signs were ignored. It was the night of April 28, 1903, and around midnight, the night shift miners were preparing to begin work. and Meeting at Dominion Avenue and walking down the street and across the river to the base of the mountain where the entrance to the mine was, was Turtle Mountain, at the foot of which was the entrance to the mine, a lower shaft was also dug for air flow. and an auxiliary river Escape Crow Nest, also known as the Middle Fork of the Old Man River, separated the mine from the town.

Gold Creek flowed from the north and joined the river. The slide re-rooted the stream to the path we see today, but before the slide. On the night of April 28 and the early hours of the 29th, the creek flowed further along this road, the railroad following the pass that cut north of the city when it first opened, it did not travel much further than the western end of the pass, but now, in 1903, it connected to several other cities in British Columbia and the western United States; in fact, now, after midnight, a Lethbridge train bound for Spokane Washington was running late and expected to arrive at 4:30 a.m. m., this train was known as the Spokane Flyer and several people in the city of Frank were staying in hotels waiting for the train to arrive and were ready to board waiting for another train.

They were Ellen and John Thornley. John owned a shoe store on the east side of town. His sister Ellen was staying with him and Frank all winter. for Medical Treatments and with the treatments already finished she was waiting for a train to finally return home instead of staying all night in the Shoe Store where John lived, he suggested that they get a hotel room at the Frank Hotel which was near the station and then that. That way, the next day they wouldn't have to rush to get there on time. Ellen agreed and this simple decision saved both their lives, but not their shoes.

A freight train was moving slowly through the pass delayed due to an eastbound snow storm and Now I had to wait even longer to give the delayed Spokane wheel the right of way when it finally arrived. The freight train stopped at a siding and additional coal cars were connected until the end, east of the city, was a line of seven. Cabins the first cabin closest to town was Carl and Annie benser's house Carl was born in Germany and Annie was born near Shui in Nova Scotia the next house belonged to the leech family Alex Rosemary and her seven children moved to the town shortly after the grand opening and Alex opened the town's first general store, the next house belonged to the Montana acro family, Charles Nancy and his son Lester, the fourth cabinIt belonged to the ANS family, Sam, his wife Lucy and their four children, as well as Lucy's brother. who worked in the mine the fifth cabin belonged to the Watkins family John Mary and three of his children the sixth cabin was empty and the seventh cabin belonged to the Clark family Alex Clark worked in the mine during the night shift his daughter Lillian worked in the boarding house downtown and was working late tonight.

Alex's wife and five other children slept in the cabin in the valley to the east. There were several additional cabins, two ranches, and a hobo camp. In total, 75 or more people were said to be sleeping soundly beyond. The city of Bliss totally unaware of the imminent danger. It was just after 4 a.m. For the night miners it was lunch time. A small handful of workers decided to leave the mines and have lunch in the cool night air. A locomotive magnate pushed a coal car up a siding towards the mine to leave it there for At night the locomotive was under the command of a mergatroid Ben with two attendants walking alongside the locomotive ready to couple the car.

A roar came from the top of the mountain. In fact, this roar was so loud that Ben could hear it over the top of the mountain. driving steam locomotive. Several large rocks began to roll down the mountainside, jumping onto the tracks within sight of them. Ben knew exactly what was happening without hesitation, he yelled at the two of him. Assistants climbed aboard and he opened the throttle, the locomotive began to gain speed while the other two men clung to the railings on the side, the entire top of the mountain came loose, the entire layer of protruding heavy limestone collapsed. beginning his race towards the valley.

Annihilating everything in its path, large trees were broken like twigs flowing down the mountainside with a movement similar to water. 110 million tons of limestone. The rock swept across the entrance to the mine, carrying away all the workers there, including Alex Clark and any of the mine buildings, the car carrying the crew. had just fallen a moment ago was picked up and thrown 2 miles away, a mergatroid pushed the locomotive as hard as it could across the bridge over Gold Creek, as soon as it did, the bridge flew like it was paper, but the engine and Its three crew members had gotten out of the way of the slide just in time, most were not so lucky. 100 seconds of roaring Carnage passed, the slide only stopping because it hit the mountain range on the other side of the valley and even went up 500 feet.

On the other hand, the crash was so loud that it was heard north of Calgary, 200 km away or more than 120 miles, when the mergatroid locomotive stopped at the under-construction Frank train station and, safe from the slide of rocks, they discovered that the late Spokane incoming. The Telegraph last reported that the flier was approaching the city at high speed on the other side of the rockslide; Worse yet, telegraph lines had been cut in the slide and had no way to warn them to stop the Spokane flyer carrying dozens of passengers. He was speeding through the darkness toward twisted, mangled rails that were buried beneath a 100-foot-deep limestone wall.

Sid Choat, one of the two men helping Ben Mergatroid who dodged the rockslide at the last second aboard the locomotive, grabbed a signal flag and ran across the rocks still settling through the dust. , the smoke and the heat because the rocks were quite hot when they fell and he ran for 2 and a half kilometers or almost a mile and a half across these rocks to the other side and He arrived just in time to signal the train to stop. This was his second race against time that night, he narrowly won and saved lives to reward his heroism.

The Canadian Pacific Railroad gave him a check for $25 or about 600. In Canada today, as terrible as the rock slide was, it could have been much worse, most of Frank was saved and the slide narrowly missed him and it only destroyed the eastern outskirts, but for those in that area it was absolutely devastating, the two ranches were completely razed all the temporary cabins that were built on the Eastern Flats disappeared along with their occupants, the row of seven cabins occupied by the families were razed , but its occupants had mixed results. It is seen when the rocks crashed into the mountain, they hit Crow first.

The Nest River which raised a wall of water, mud and dirt that preceded the rocks in the rockslide, the rockslide was so dense that air couldn't really flow into it, so a solid wall of air The displaced air preceded the dirt and mud that was in front of the rocks, so this air moved and threw things around, but in some cases it softened the impact. Alex Clark was one of the first victims of the rockslide while he was having lunch by the mine entrance and his wife and children in his cabin. Returning home had no chance of being the closest of those seven cabins, the only survivor of the family was their daughter Lillian, the eldest, who was working at the boarding house and ended up spending the night there, the boarding house was safe out of the way of the slide. the other six cabins were destroyed, some on fire and other people crawling out of the rubble.

While others called for help, the town of Frank woke up and several people ran from their homes across Gold Creek to help anyone trapped in the rubble. The family was lucky that everyone survived, including their young daughter, even though the house was in complete ruin. The Watkins family next door had the same luck with all the children who survived. Mrs Watkins had been thrown out of the house and was now trapped under the debris of the Enis. At home, how she survived with only a couple of broken bones is a miracle. The Acro family was not so lucky even though they were further away than the Enis and Watkins houses.

Mr. and Mrs. Acro probably survived the rockslide, but died in the moments that followed. When his house burned, his son Lester was in bed and he and his bed were thrown from the house and he was found impaled through his mattress by a piece of wood. He was still alive and managed to remove the wood and walk away. Lester. was lying in bed at the time of the slide, as most of the residents were devastated. The twisted bed frame was found among the ruins and is displayed in the museum as a reminder of where most people were at the time sleeping soundly in the bed of him, the second family of leeches. the one furthest from the slide had a completely mixed fate: his house had been cut in two, the top part had been cut off from the bottom part, and the bottom part was completely destroyed.

Alex and Rosemary Leech along with the four children were lost to further embitter that tragedy just a week before a relative was murdered. When visiting the leeches' house and telling Rosemary how small the cabin was, Mrs. Leech offered to take the four children on two vacations so the house wouldn't be so small. I'm sure the kids were excited about the offer. but the leech lady politely declined if she had accepted her offer those four children would not have been there at the time of the rockfall. Two of the leeches' daughters were pulled out from under the collapsed roof and survived.

Maran's youngest leech, 2 years old, was thrown from where the section of the roof instead of landing on the hard limestone rocks that came down from the mountain and now extended for miles from the house, landed squarely on a just pile of hay. This dance of Hay's journey began half a mile back when the rockslide tore apart. Through the horse stables Mar and Leech were found sitting unharmed on this bale of hay. Similarly, 3-year-old Fernie Watkins had been thrown from her home and was found landing in a pile of soft rubble not far from Mar and the leech newspapers then sensationalized their stories individually and claimed that they were unidentified orphans and the sole survivors of the Frank rockslide.

That is not true. The furthest cabin belonging to the Benser family had been picked up and set up along the slide with virtually no damage. Virtual, of course, is a relative term and family. was saved from a scheduling mix up was tragic for some but lucky for others two Welsh miners were scheduled to leave town about a week before the rockfall but had problems with their tickets they lived in a cabin and two other miners moved to town Hoping to move into that cabin due to a schedule mix-up, these other two miners ended up having to stay a week or more at the Union Hotel while they waited for these Welshmen to arrange their tickets and leave at the time of the rockslide, the two Welshmen .

He occupied the cabin and the cabin disappeared due to this ticketing error. It was the Welsh who were captured and not these other two miners. When dawn broke, search parties scoured miles of rock looking for survivors, but they had a new problem: rockslides. had completely doomed the Crows Nest River and a portion of the area had flooded, perhaps claiming more victims who were trapped under the debris. The main entrance to the Frank Mine was buried in rocks from which they would have had to escape through the lower entrance, but that was now. Flooded and submerged 17 men and at least one workhorse were trapped in the mine beneath Shattered Mountain the possibility of external rescue was nil so their fate was in their own hands several of the miners were injured by gusts of air and tremors When the slide occurred and A quick assessment showed that every last mine vent was blocked to make matters worse, but the tremors had stirred up the poisonous gases that were previously trapped in the rocks, the air was spoiling rapidly and had They assessed that the mine entrance had collapsed about 300 feet, so they would have to dig 300 feet without even realizing that there was an additional 100 feet of solid stone beyond them, so they made little progress digging, but one of the miners pointed out that because of the way the mountain was formed, the coal seams became vertical, that is why they built those chambers where they were excavating them, but some of those vertical coal seams went directly to the surface, the coal It was significantly faster to excavate than solid limestone, so they literally got to work.

Working their way through the coal one by one, the miners collapsed as they ran out of air until only three of them were still digging. That's when they surfaced around 5:00 p.m., for a full 13 hours. Beyond the rockslide, this photograph was taken of the 17 surviving miners, as well as the rescuers trying to make their way into the mines, returning to the devastated city. Many of these men had family members in the path of the slide. Some returned home with good news. While others were met with tragedy, today it is easy to visit the Frank Slide Museum and walk the paths carved through the rubble.

He wanted to see if he could find the entrance to the mine. Finding the entrance to the mine is described in the The 60s were already difficult. I talked to some people at the Museum and they told me that someone was there a decade or two ago and took some photographs, but since then it has probably grown and people forgot where it was when I arrived. I went to look for it, some people hanging out by the river said it just doesn't exist anymore so this might be nonsense. I ended up leaving my wife and son hanging around where the seven cabins once stood, albeit the bridge across Crow Nest.

The river was eventually rebuilt after the landslide in an effort to reopen mining operations. The bridge once again disappeared. These posts here were actually the pilings of the railroad bridge that used to cross here. These are actually from when the bridge was later rebuilt. I didn't have an easy way to cross the rockslide, which vaguely reminded me of The Rescuers who went after the men trapped in the mine. They had to make an improvised raft with rubble to cross this river. I'm trying to find my way. I'll cross the creek pretty deep here without getting my clothes too wet.

If you ever go out on a hike, keep in mind that even if the water is only a foot deep, it can still have a pretty strong current, so be careful, because it was pretty strong. and after an hour of searching I finally found machinery. It's hard to say what this is behind me. When I talked to people around here, they said it's part of an old fan, but just by looking at it it looks like a hoist that I can easily see. a kind oflong cable that pulls the carts or the ore out of there uh but I could be completely wrong, well we have managed to find the mine, it's amazing to think about the history of this place, it wasn't easy to find.

They're boarded up down there, but I'm sure they don't have to worry because there are a lot of people trying to get in. There is a strong smell of sulfur coming from there. It smells pretty bad. I'm not going to stay here long. It sure isn't good air, it's nice that I was able to find it like I said, it wasn't lost, it was just out of place, okay, that stinks, it smells like old weak KFC, there are old bricks covered in mud here, the mine was reopened A month ago after the landslide and all the mine buildings near the entrance that were completely leveled were rebuilt.

All the rock blocking this tunnel was quickly removed. With the mine having been found, there is only one more thing in this immediate area that I want to see. if you could find it and that is the hole that the miners dug from, there is an old photograph with x that shows where the mine is and it shows where that hole is in relation to the mine, it is right above and a little to the left , so I want to see if I can get there. There are no trails. Obviously I have to be very careful when passing by here because if there is a hole in the ground, I have to be prepared not to fall into it, so here it is.

Rock in that old photograph, which means the hole they came out of should be right here, but here's what's concrete on this slab here and you can see it's on top of some sort of opening that we've made. we found their emergency exit we found where they were extracted from the tunnel this is amazing I'm taking a moment to sit here and think about it think about how they were trapped there for hours and hours without knowing what happened it happened that the air is running out and They are desperate to get out when they finally emerge, it is daylight and all they see is just a rock stretching to the other side of the mountain, now a new fear must take over them: their family and friends, it is okay and I am alone. thinking about the men coming out of this hole here and some would go home, some would have no home to return to and some would return to Good News, some would return to bad news and some would return. to mixed news, but it makes sense that they covered everything and, uh, here it is, in a sense, this is one of the largest tombstones in the world, the exact number of dead cannot be established since very few bodies have been recovered, It is estimated that there are around 90 people lost in the tragedy.

Some people believe that there was a camp of transient workers that were camping next to the railroad and if you believe that if they were really there, you can add maybe 50 people to that death toll of 90 people. The train sent by the Canadian Pacific Railroad arrived the next day and carried police and medical supplies, but the city had little need for doctors because very few people who were in the path of the rockslide survived and because those who did miraculously walked. . With minor injuries, the town's resident doctor and nurse had already controlled the situation, another problem was brewing, although a second rockslide was feared, as large rocks were still breaking off the mountain and falling 2 days later After the landslide, the entire city of Frank was evacuated by rail to nearby towns.

He was supposed to be a looter and would be shot on the spot. Fortunately, no one took the risk. One of the few people given permission to re-enter the city during the 9 days in which the evacuation was imposed was Harry Mat, owner of the property. Frank Sentinel was given permission to go in and make the spelling mistakes on him and in the middle of it all he published this newspaper with typos and all the typos this time could certainly be excused under the circumstances. This, of course, is a replica, but we can see. Vivid's account of the disaster and a list of confirmed dead, all surrounded by advertisements for currently abandoned businesses, in fact, on the cover is an advertisement for Alexander Leech's grocery store, the store was still intact but Mr.

Leech was gone. The plate from this newspaper still exists in the museum today. The evacuation was eventually lifted, but it was a long time before most people returned. On May 30, a month after the slide, the mines were finally reopened and workers made a surprising discovery. Of the workhorses, a horse named Charlie was still alive and had been living in the mines all this time. He drank the flood water and ate wood from the tunnels' support beams when they discovered he was hungry and urgently needed a veterinarian. and when the miners took him out, they allowed him to gorge on all the oats and brandy he could eat after surviving all this time.

It was gorging himself that finally killed him. In the aftermath of the disaster, the extent to which Lamina was to blame for the rockslide was hotly debated. They were digging huge caverns beneath the mountain, but caverns like these were not a problem beneath other normally stable mountains. The slide itself extended almost exactly from the southern majority of the chambers they dug to the entrance to the north, so the mine itself defined the extent of the rockslide, the mine itself was not the only factor in game, we know that the mountain was already naturally unstable and the previous winters were exceptionally snowy, so when the snow melted, more water than usual came in. the cracks and fissures in the mountain which also helped to erode it over the course of several months a path was cut through the rocks using dynamite so the CPR line was reopened following the path of the original railway and service continued and still runs this track today CPR were extracting rock along the tracks they dug and using it as ballast in other parts of Canada and in 1949 they discovered a box of old shoes in the vicinity of Thornley's shoe shop, there is a pair of these shoes on display in the museum if Mr.

Thornley had not suggested staying in a hotel that night, CPR could have found two more bodies along with these shoes, going about a mile around the Interpretive Center there is a walking trail that takes you through a Part of the rock slide as you pass some of the Rocks Tower above you, giving you an idea of ​​how terrifying it was for millions of them to roll down the mountain at 75 mph. A portion of the walking trail actually follows the railroad bed for the branch line to the town of Lil to the north; the railroad to Lil was eventually completed, at times excavated through the remains of this rockslide.

This surely doesn't seem like it today because the topography was decimated by the landslide, but right now we are walking along a The old railroad bed, the Frank and Grassy Mountain Railroad, passed through here and was under construction at the time of the slide. of rocks, since it was night, the construction of the railway had stopped and not far from here is where the men were camping. I don't know how many were there, but the rockfall wiped them all out. They were waiting for more men to join them, but they were delayed for a day. Their death toll would have been much higher if they had arrived in time.

The city of Frank continued. to flourish as mining on the mountain expanded, the mine was soon producing twice as much coal as before the slide in 1905, the population had outgrown the original town plot, and a new subdivision was built on the north side of the railroad tracks. this area featured more homes, businesses, churches, and schools. Town co-founder Sam Gabo even had a mansion built in this part of town in 1906, nicknamed the castle by local children. Sites such as Sam's Castle and a Catholic church were blown down by a wind storm in 1917. But I wanted to see what might have been left behind in some of these places, although this area had nothing to do with the history of the landslide itself. , okay, so we're at the Catholic church site, this is old, this is very, very old, it still has the nails on it, I could almost put this whole boot back together.

I wish I could make that label. I bet someone in the comments will recognize that logo. You can see some letters behind the barbed wire fence of the church and then this post there are some of them there are at least three in a row of these 1 2 3 is a fourth a glass insulator insulator for telegraph poles or some kind of power line oh we're inside an old building, stone wall more of those pillars, what could this have been? The mountain loomed ever present, the landslide scar, prominent fears of additional landslides never went away and in 1911, after a survey detected new fissures on the mountaintop, the government ordered the southern part of the city to be that existed at the time of the landslide, most of the buildings were torn down or packed up and relocated elsewhere, leaving only the barren site of the city marked by dirt roads, for example, the former Imperial Hotel was packed up and sent to 100 km away to Vulcan Alberta and is now the Vulcan Hotel, over time the fears subsided and in recent years some industrial buildings were allowed to move, but what remains of the old part of the city, apart from the plans of the streets, it's not much, honestly, other than what's buried under the rocks I can only find this old fire hydrant this piece of rusty metal is the last marker of a once prosperous settlement all these little mounds here once They were buildings and some of these wells were vendors.

I wasn't sure what area I was exploring at the time, but it looks like this may be the location of the old Frank Hotel. You already know the supposed Resort. This is also where the Thornleys stayed the night of the slide to save their lives. Mining operations continued but declined after a few years of prosperity there. There were accidents and even fires inside the mine and it was a large underground fire in 1918 that finally closed the mine for good after many of Frank's residents left, although it still has a sizable population in the 1905 subdivision right here, at about 1000 feet.

More or less beyond the Interpretation Center is where the original Municipal Cemetery was. We know that at least seven people died in the town of Frank before the landslide, but we don't know who was buried here, unlike the nearby cemeteries, the only two confirmed. The burials we know of in this cemetery are John Simon and Peter VIN On April 26, 1902, the Frank Mine suffered an underground explosion that claimed the lives of these two men. Their headstones, along with the headstones of anyone else buried here, were obliterated by the rock. slide and I had no luck finding them.

We were driving on the old Frank Slide Road built in 1906 through the boulder field in 1922, as a crew widened a portion of the road near the old cabins that were buried, they discovered the remains of the Clark family, including a baby crib . The remains were buried where they were found and this marker was erected in his memory and this became known as the Frank Slide Cemetery. Two survivors chose to be buried here and we now see their stones there. I managed to find some wood on the rocks in the area of ​​James Graham's ranch house. Whether these woods are from that ranch or not, no one knows.

Now someone made a little bit from rock sliding. The rockslide was all limestone and limestone has many uses. construction like concrete and gypsum or in coal mines to help manage the dust once again the mountain had extracted it itself and all this limestone was waiting to be collected a businessman named Joe little wanted to take advantage of the limestone market and I wouldn't do it. He doesn't have to take it out of the quarry, all the work has already been done for him, it's just here waiting for someone to pick it up, so in 1909 he bought a share of the rockslide and then in 1912 he and a couple of his other investor friends.

He had built two of these lime kilns here. A year later, the company was sold and the new owners built a third one with cheaper material, but it still worked. These two ovens here are actually the original ones from 1911, they are made of a more expensive material. concrete while this one next door the strange one this is the newer one that was built a year later and is simply rock extracted from the rock slide the kilms are responsible for removing a small portion of the rock from the slide by cleaning some of the areas which were once covered in old photographs but look clearer today, a single hut stands near the ovens, barely overhanging, although small, the bathtub inside indicates it could have been someone's entire house around the base of the lime kiln. a small communitybegan to emerge and this was known as Lime City, it was the workers and their families.

It lasted a short time. By 1918, Lime Kil had closed and by 1923 the site was completely deserted. It can be said that the city is a ghost town within a ghost town. Despite their efforts to work the rock, they would never have been able to clean the entire site. It is estimated that 10 gravel trucks hauling 3 tons each 10 times a day would take 66 full years to clean up that mess. Upstairs there are other interesting mining related ruins at Crow's Nest Pass, just a stone's throw from the slide, while Alex Leech and most of his immediate family were wiped out in the rockslide, his other relatives established the ceries leech in 1907 to the To the east, the ruins at this site are extensive and well preserved, as well as being easily accessible to visitors.

The ruins include a massive sandstone power station built in 1910 that supplied electricity to its mine and nearby towns. A row of 101 coke ovens designed to convert coal into Coca-Cola by heating it. The manager's house and a Tipple are also located on this site, although they have no direct connection to Frank's slide. These give us a great idea of ​​what the job was like. At Crow's Nest Pass is the Frank's Slide Interpretive Center. At the top of the hill north of the rockslide overlooking the eerie rock alley, the museum is a fantastic place to visit and learn about the disaster, as well as the Life In The Crows Nest Pass, featuring artifacts, photographs, countless stories and a Turtle Mountain theater.

Still lingering over the valley, although it is noticeably shorter than it was before the slide, the threat of another slide remains a concern with efforts being made to study the mountain, monitor it seismically and keep an eye on those fissures, it is likely that Eventually another slide will come from one of the peaks, but it is expected to give many warning signs well in advance and, unlike in 1903, they plan to heed those warnings, yet the general attitude of most Frank residents is that if it happens, it happens. I want to thank my viewers here for suggesting this. site for me I was visiting Alberta and asked my channel what stories they would like me to investigate and this was a fantastic suggestion.

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