Wild Wanderings: Coal Country!

I spent a peaceful evening in Bellevue, Alberta, after scoping out some of the things I wanted to do the next day in the Crowsnest Pass area.

Crowsnest Pass Area

The area has quite a tourist thing going on — lots of information available about what to do in both summer and winter. The towns of the Crowsnest municipality include: Frank, Bellevue, Blairmore, Coleman and Hillcrest.

Looking west from Crowsnest Pass

These are all coal towns, founded around the turn of the century when coal — the preferred fuel for homes, industry and the Canadian Pacific railroad — was king.

A lot of money was spent here.
A lot of coal was pulled out of the mountains.
... And a lot of coal dust went into the air.

The first order of business was to try to find the library (for wifi) rumored to be in Bellevue. I found the location early in the morning, but unfortunately although the signs for "Adult Literacy" were still up, I was informed by two workers that the library had moved to Blairmore. So much for getting something done in the morning.

I had about and hour or two to kill before having to be at the mine for the 10 AM tour, so decided to do the Bellevue city walking tour. There was even a helpful pamphlet and map.

Bellevue Cafe, site of a famous 1920 shootout,
was built and run by a Chinese, Joe Mah.

Bellevue

Bellevue's downtown has retained many old buildings, despite having several devastating fires (1917 and 1921) during its history. One thinks that, with such frequent fires, perhaps the residents would have learned to build with something other than wood! What's left — most of it built during the '20s — reminded me quite a bit of Larkspur.

About two blocks long, it had all the elements of a small town: a livery, hotels, school, cigar store, pool hall, hardware store, grocery, bakery, and "refreshment" cafe.

Each of the historical buildings had at least one photo of what it looked like in the past, along with stories about what happened there, so it was easy to envision what the town had looked like and what life there might have been like.

Like any small town, it had its share of prominent and successful businessmen, everyday workers and bad guys.

Not much information about the women, though! And nothing about brothels or "fancy houses." Maybe they were so fine and upstanding they didn't have them. Or they weren't downtown!

Brazzoni Building (1927), (not sure of the middle building), E.C. McDonald Drug Store (1920)

For a small town, it had a diverse population: there were Italians, Germans, Chinese, Russians, Ukrainians and Poles, and probably also some Welsh and Irish.

Signpost for the Crowsnest Community Trail

Enticed by a sign in a small pocket park, I actually took quite a long walk through other parts of the town. Turns out this signpost was for the Crowsnest Community Trail, a 23-km multi-use path that links all of the towns in the area and and features many interesting sites along the way.

If I had known about this, I would have arranged my day differently. As it was, once out of town and tramping along well on my way to the Frank Slide, I was deterred by the "Beware of Bears" signs, since it does go through wild areas, and apparently you can run into bears anywhere up here. I hadn't anticipated taking such a long walk, and didn't have my bear spray along, so turned back.

I really am not in the lower 48 anymore!

Anyway, I could easily have spent more time here, and would gladly come back to visit the other towns and places that I missed this time around.

> Click here for an excellent pamphlet with historical photos on Bellevue and Hillcrest.

At the entrance to the mine

Bellevue Coal Mine

Despite my long walk, I managed to get to the Bellevue Coal Mine on time for the 10:00am tour. I had some trepidation on the way, as a bus passed me as I went there, and I was afraid that I either wouldn't get on the tour, or would be shoehorned in with a busful of tourists.

An energetic young met me as I came in, explained that I'd have to be outfitted with a hard hat and mine light, and warned me that it was (1) cold, (2) dark, and (3) confining in the mine, and was I okay with that? Did I still want to pay my money for going down?

I said, "Yes," really not thinking a lot about my unease at being underground. In caves. Or mines.

But I've never been in a coal mine, and wanted to see and learn about it. So I went.

Inside of the Bellevue coal mine entrance

I paid my money and donned my down sweater, then got the provided hard hat, battery belt and helmet light. Much to my surprise, I was the ONLY one on this hour's tour! The bus I had seen was a troop of school children, and they had already disappeared into the maw of the mine. So "Mel" was my personal tour guide for the entire hour!

It was a GREAT tour. Just the experience of being in the mine was amazing in itself, but Mel told me about the history of mining in the area and how the mine actually was worked — it was determined by the geology of the coal seams, which are sandwiched between layers of harder limestone rock.

Main mine shaft. It's really tilted — on purpose. It was hard to
take pictures in the dark as you can't see what you're aiming at!

Because the rock layers were tilted at an angle, everything in the mine is tilted because it's stronger to support at right angles to the seams. Where we were walking had all been restored and strengthened with new timbers, but the railroad ties (at the top "arch" in the photo at right) are original. The builders recycled the rails !

While the shafts were supported with timbers and rails, between them were tin sheets on the ceiling to keep rock from falling down (one of the reasons we were wearing hard hats). It apparently took several iterations of hats to come up with truly protective hard hats — the early hats were just made of cloth and offered little protection. Even the horses wore leather helmets to protect them.

Mel regaled me with stories about the bosses, individual miners, the rescue workers, safety features (or lack of them), and some of the sometimes simple, but effective, technology used in the mine: like using rock dust to decrease the danger of igniting coal dust, and the observation of pack rat behavior to monitor dangerous gas levels (they were cheaper than canaries).

"Room and pillar," "gob," "tipple:" all these are mining terms that I never knew about. I learned so much, and came out with my mind spinning.

Turtle Mountain and the Frank Slide from the east.

Frank Slide

After leaving the Bellevue Coal Mine, I hot-footed it to the Frank Slide Interpretive Center. (Unfortunately I later learned there was a letterbox here; wish I had known that!)

On April 29, 1903, a massive landslide occurred on the side of Turtle Mountain. I've studied geology and never heard of this slide.

The amount of rock that came down, and the distance the rubble traveled is incredible. It didn't just slump from the mountain, like the landslides we're accustomed to in California.

Walking in the rubble field – pikas are supposed to live here!

Either there was so much of it that broke apart on its way down, or maybe there was water mixed in with the rock to help lubricated the pieces, or maybe it was riding on a cushion of air... whatever happened, the rubble almost flowed down the mountain, obliterated part of the town of Frank (luckily only a small portion of it), and continued across the valley.

The amount of material moved in what was reported to be 100 seconds is remarkable.

Pink honeysuckle

Here is a really good aerial photo that shows the extent of the devastation: you cannot really see or comprehend it from the ground.

The causes of the slide are: (1) primarily the geology: it was an "accident waiting to happen" because of the faulting and folding of the rock layers. (2) This was compounded by cycles of melting and freezing that allowed water to get into weakened fractures, then freeze and expand. And (3) there is some thought that coal mining activities below the surface may have additionally weakened the structure of the mountain, but that's been hard to prove. Anyway, it's an amazing site.

Read about it, plus a cool animation

There's a nice trail that goes into the rubble field; there were lots of flowers, and interesting rocks (a pebble conglomerate). I wasn't even nervous about bears!

Panorama attempting to show the extent of the devastation, but it just doesn't to justice to it.

Powerhouse at the Leitch Collieries, consisting of
boiler room, engine room and machine shop

Leitch Collieries

It was early afternoon and I still had one more place to go! I'd seen the Leitch Collieries buildings on my way to Bellevue, and it looked like an interesting and different place to go. There were tours at 11am and 2pm, so I made for the 2pm tour at the site.

Unbelievably, there were TWO girl guides there, Janise and Kestrel, and NO ONE ELSE. So I had my second personal tour of the day.

Ruined coke ovens

The Leitch Collieries were built by the Leitch brothers. As explained to me, they were very optimistic and poured a lot of money into the mine workings, thinking that they were investing in a prosperous future. They began building in about 1907, and rapidly put up the power house, tipple, washery, 113 coke ovens, and an impressive house for the mine superintendent, Billy Hamilton.

Except for the tipple/washery (an impressive 7-story building which was built of wood and only the cement basins survive), all of these structures were built from stone and concrete and still stand in various states of disrepair. Unfortunately, the Collieries were fraught with bad luck: there was a strike, the owners overbuilt and went into debt, World War II started so that they lost some of their market, and then the bottom fell out of the coal market. They banks foreclosed and they went out of business around 1917.

But the buildings remain.

The Hamilton house today

The Hamilton house in 1910.

The superintendent's house was quite an edifice. Even today, it is impressive. Built by the same Scottish stonemasons who built the powerhouse for the main mineworkings, it was three stories, built of local sandstone, and had a wide wrap-around veranda on three sides.

The first floor had servants' quarters, a laundry/utility room, kitchen and dining area. The main second floor had a parlour, dining room, den, master bedroom and bath, two children's rooms, playroom and a spare room. There were four bedrooms on the third floor.

The home had stained glass windows, lath and plaster walls, and must have been resplendent when it was occupied. The Hamilton's five children had ponies and took care of the chickens.

It must have been quite a life, if short.

Seeing places like this, whether from the relatively recent past like this, or from Rome, or Greece, I always want to squint my eyes and imagine myself in clothes of the era, managing such a household and all that it entailed — just thinking in this case what it must have been like to live in a coal-mining town, what with the noise, coal dust in the air and the general activity.

And I wasn't done, yet.

There was one more place on my list for the day...

Lundbreck Falls

There really isn't that much to say other than that these falls are known as the "mini-Niagara" for obvious reasons. Really pretty waterfall. You can go on both sides by walking across a picturesque bridge. I walked to the bottom, across, and all around, reveling in the sunshine and moderate wind. I cooked dinner at the top on the convenient picnic tables and shared the space with a sort of a golden mantled ground squirrel — adorable little thing and quite fearless. It was eating dandelion blossoms. Utterly too cute.

There was even an awesome letterbox there (and I found it)!

— Best. Day. EVER! —