Visiting Frank’s Slide

Last week I was working in southern Alberta and stayed in Waterton Park which is a ghost town mid-week in the winter. The clerk at the hotel I stayed at said the population of the town shrinks to around 70 people in the winter. Still, a very pretty spot.

I was fortunate enough to stop and take in some Alberta history by visiting Frank’s Slide. In the early morning of April 29, 1903, 82 million tonnes of lime stone broke away from Turtle mountain and crushed Frank…Frank being the busy mining town in the Crows Nest pass area. I had read about the site before but had no idea how huge the slide was. It looks as if a chunk of the mountain was blasted off. Hard to imagine there is a town (and 70 people) buried under it all.