Frank Slide - Background

Background

The town of Frank was founded in the southwestern corner of the District of Alberta in the Northwest Territories in 1901. A location was chosen near the base of Turtle Mountain in the Crowsnest Pass, where coal had been discovered one year earlier. It was named after Henry Frank, who along with Samuel Gebo, owned the Canadian-American Coal and Coke Company, which operated the mine that the town was created to support. The pair celebrated the founding of the town on September 10, 1901, with a gala opening that featured speeches from territorial leaders, sporting events, a dinner and tours of the mine and planned layout for the community. The Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) ran special trains that brought over 1,400 people from neighbouring communities to celebrate the event. By April 1903, the permanent population had reached 600, and the town featured a two-storey school and four hotels.

Turtle Mountain stands immediately south of Frank. It consists of an older limestone layer folded over top of softer materials such as shale and sandstone. Erosion had left the mountain with a steep overhang of its limestone layer. It has long been unstable; the Blackfoot and Kutenai peoples called it "The Mountain that Moves", and refused to camp in its vicinity. In the weeks leading up to the disaster, miners occasionally felt rumblings from within the mountain, while the pressure created by the shifting rock sometimes caused the timbers supporting the mine shafts to crack and splinter.