The Frank Slide today - Date/Photographer unknown.

5 November 2012

Canada's Deadliest Rockslide a Popular Roadside Attraction

Frank Alberta - The site of Canada's deadliest rockslide in the Crowsnest Pass of southwestern Alberta is impossible to miss.
 
In fact, it is about as subtle as a slap in the face.
 
Highway 3, which connects Alberta with southeastern BC, weaves its way through giant gray limestone boulders like a dark ribbon.
 
Some of the boulders are as big as school buses, others the size of small houses.
 
And 109 years after 82 million tonnes of rock fell from the summit of Turtle Mountain into the Crowsnest River valley below, little has changed.
 
The slide lasted a mere 90 seconds but in that short time at least 90 people were killed and the southeastern corner of the coal mining town of Frank, Alberta, disappeared.
 
"It's such an unusual landscape. It's awe-inspiring with all of this rock. You drive through and you're not expecting it and you think, what happened here?" explained Monica Field, the area manager for the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre.
 
The rockslide buried the eastern outskirts of the town.
 
It also obliterated a two kilometre stretch of the Canadian Pacific Railway, surface buildings of the Canadian American Coal and Coke Company, two ranches, a portion of the Frank and Grassy Mountain Railway line to the historic coal mining town of Lille, a construction camp, and livery stables.
 
Bill Graveland.