Frank is a justly celebrated town, both from a business and industrial as well as a picturesque point of view. The town owes its existence to the enterprise and work of the Canadian American Coal and Coke Company Limited, which company was practically the pioneer in the development of the vast underground wealth of the Pass, designating the Pass as that section lying to the eastward of Crow's Nest to the prairie lands. About the first of the year 1901, a Mr. Gebo decided after prospecting to open a seam of coal at Frank, which is now being worked at the site of the present holdings of the Canadian American Coal and Coke Co. He soon met with success, and he was joined by a Mr. Frank. The ground was purchased and plans for making a coal mine were immediately set afoot. At that time Frank town site was only a wilderness of timber and bush, but work was soon undertaken to clear it. Miners' cottages were erected, the railway company built a spur line to where the town is now situated, and thus in a small way we find Frank as an actual unit in Canadian history taking its place. In November, 1901, the Canadian American Coal and Coke Co. was formed by H.L. Frank, the President, S.W. Gebo, Vice-President and General Manager, and Mark Drum, Secretary-Treasurer. Progress in the work and development of the company has been steady ever since, with the exception of the disaster of the rock slide, which entailed a serious damage to the company's workings, and later on a fire at the mine, both of which would have disheartened most companies, but we learn that it has surmounted every obstacle and faced every tribulation, and today stands in a good position with its mine in good working order.

Author unknown.
 

Samuel Wilford Gebo (1862-1940) was an entrepreneur influential in the early development of the U.S. state of Montana. Born in Canada in 1862, Gebo grew up near Ogdensburg, New York, and lived briefly in Minnesota before settling in Montana in the early 1890s. Between 1895 and 1897, Sam Gebo's Clarks Fork Coal Company developed the Gebo Mine near present-day Fromberg (originally named Gebo) in Carbon County, Montana. In 1900 he and Butte businessman Henry Frank formed the Canadian American Coal and Coke Company developing a lucrative coal mine at Frank, Alberta (the mine was damaged by the Frank Slide of 1903, but soon reopened and remained productive until 1918). After the death of Henry Frank in 1908, the Canadian American Coal and Coke Company was reorganized into the Canadian Consolidated Coal Company with Gebo as its managing director. Gebo also developed the Spring Creek Mine near Lewistown, Montana, and the Owl Creek Coal Mine in Gebo, Wyoming. Gebo built a large Director's house in Frank in 1901, and also built a 300 acre ranch near Fromberg between 1904-1908. It included a large brick house and a 9,000 square foot barn. Under pressure from an indictment on federal land fraud charges in Wyoming, Gebo abruptly left for Guatemala where he developed a marble quarry in 1913, and his Fromberg ranch was put up for auction. Gebo retired to Seattle in 1927 with his second wife. He died in 1940 at home from a gas-leak. (A suicide according to one report.)

Wikipedia.