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by Trudy Handel
On April 28, 1903, the residents of the newly-emerged
boomtown of Frank went to sleep, dreaming of prosperity in the coalfields of
southern Alberta.
At 4:10 a.m., April 29, their lives changed forever - when Turtle Mountain above
them hurtled 70 million tons of limestone down onto the tiny village.
Like gigantic puzzle pieces randomly strewn across the landscape, the rocks
destroyed half the town while leaving the other half miraculously untouched.
Gold Creek, which ran through the centre of town, was the erratic marker of the
slide. Everything east of the creek disappeared, while all the area west of the
creek was left safe. Fate had a heyday, as some people left their homes by
coincidence and were saved, while others were simply in the wrong place at the
wrong time - and died because of it.
Heroes were made, loved ones were gone - all in the space of ninety seconds of
unbelievable destruction. At least sixty people were lost on that fateful night,
encased forever in a hundred feet of rock.
Flamboyant Montana financier H.L Frank bought into the newly-discovered coal
seam in Southern Alberta in 1900, and began building the company town. It
“opened” in a huge celebration in September of the next year, attracting miners
and businesspeople alike.
By that fateful night in 1903, the town of “Frank” boasted an electric light
plant, a booming mine business, and six hundred residents. In the early evening,
the local baseball team played a game against the visiting Pincher Creek team.
Several of the players stayed behind for the night, bedding down on the playing
field, just east of Gold Creek. Twenty miners were scheduled to start work at
midnight in the mile-long mine tunnels. The rest of the town settled down for
the night, under the cloud-capped Turtle Mountain.
Ellen Thornley and her brother John decided to leave their shoe shop on the east
side of Gold Creek for the night, and stay in the hotel across the creek, as
Ellen had to catch an early morning train at the station.
Welshman Joe Dawes and his two friends were asleep in their cabin on the east
side of the stream. As fate would have it, their reservations on the steamer had
been delayed for a week, and they had decided to stay put in Frank for the next
few days. Dawes’s dog, lying in the cabin, began to whine, then started barking.
Dawes tried to make him stop, then put the dog outside for the night.
Two brothers, Charles and Robert Chestnut, were scheduled to move into that same
cabin, and were chaffing at the delay in the Welshman’s departure. They were
forced to stay the few extra days in the hotel, on the west side of the creek.
Ned Morgan had just finished selling some cows to rancher James Graham, who
lived far over on the east side of Gold Creek. Graham invited Ned to spend the
night, but Ned declined as his team was waiting over on the west side of Gold
Creek. He left, saying good-bye to Graham, Mrs. Graham, their two sons, and two
hired men. Graham was in a particularly good mood, as his two grown sons had
just returned safely from the Boer War.
In the Clark house, perched on the east edge of Gold Creek, Alex Clark kissed
his wife good-bye, and headed off to work in the mine. Five of his six children
lay asleep, while the eldest, Lillian, was working late at the boarding house
across the creek in town. She decided to stay overnight - the first night of her
life she’d spent away from home.
At the railway construction camp, in the meadow east of the creek, things were
quiet. About a dozen men were scattered around the tents - men with no real
names, or who didn’t want their real names known. John McVeigh had been left
behind to supervise things, while his brother and partner were overseeing the
new men coming in. The next day, one hundred and twenty eight men were scheduled
to join the crew. John thought they might need more hay for the animals, so he
sent Jack Leonard off by horseback to Pincher Creek to buy some.
Robert Watt, who ran the livery stable, was a widower with several children
waiting back east. As soon as he got settled in, he intended to send for them,
so they could all live together as a family again. He stopped in a the saloon
for a drink with a friend, Les Ferguson. Les asked Robert if he’d like to spend
the night, but Robert insisted that he had to go back to the livery stable,
located just east of Gold Creek. He said good-bye to Les.
A freight train rumbled in from the east, and stopped at the train station in
town. It disconnected the cars, then the engine worked its way up toward the
mine to pick up some full coal cars. It crossed over the bridge, heading east
toward the mine entrance, and began hooking up the cars. Ben Murgatroyd was
running the engine, while brakemen Sid Choqeutte and Bill Lowes connected the
freightcars.
Three of the miners - Alex Tashigan, Alex Clark and Fred Farrington, came to the
mouth of the mine to eat their lunch. They talked to the railwaymen as they
worked on the cars. The other mine workers were still deep inside the mine. The
railwaymen finished hooking up the cars, and started to rumble slowly down
toward the bridge.
Ben Murgatroyd heard a rock bounce off the cab of the train - then another, and
another. He shouted at the brakemen who were walking alongside the train,
telling them to jump on and hang on for their lives. He hit the throttle, and
gunned the engine down the slope. As the train bounced along the rails,
Murgatroyd heard more rock coming down, then heard an ominous roar from the
slope above. As the train crossed the bridge, thousands of tons of rock hit the
far side, knocking the bridge into the river below. The train had escaped by
mere inches.
A roaring wind proceeded the landslide, knocking down trees and buildings before
the rock rolled overtop. Millions of tons of limestone, many boulders the size
of houses, rolled down the mountain, across the eastern flats, through the
valley, going five hundred feet up the opposites slope. The entire episode took
ninety seconds.
Devastation was left behind. The mine entrance was gone, lost behind three
hundred feet of huge boulders. The three miners that had been eating their lunch
in the entrance - Tashigna, Clark, and Farrington, were no more. The other
seventeen miners were trapped somewhere deep behind the debris, inside the mine.
The sleepy village on the east side of Gold Creek had become a jungle of rocks,
mud and broken timbers, with people moaning somewhere in the gray pall of dusk
that hung over everything.
The rocks had dammed up both Gold Creek, and the Old Man River, and the water
began to rise, even as the surviving villagers plunged into the darkness,
searching for friends and family.
Sid Choquette and Bill Lowes, the trainmen who had narrowly escaped death, now
raced across the massive shifting limestone boulders, intent on stopping the
Spokane Flyer, which they knew was racing through the darkness from the east,
headed straight for the slide across the tracks. Lowes had to give up, but
Choquette continued across the slide, and managed to flag the train down with a
coal oil lantern, stopping a further disaster.
What became apparent as dawn approached the tiny town, was that there were very
few survivors. Lillian Clark, the young girl who had stayed at the boarding
house, searched frantically for her mother and five siblings. They were all
dead. She didn’t know at this point that her father had also been swept away
from the front of the mine, and that she was the only surviving member of her
family.
A forlorn dog searched in the remains of Welshman Jo Dawes’ cabin, whining. All
inside were dead. Robert and Charles Chestnut, who should have been in the cabin
while the Welshmen sailed safely away, were back at the hotel.
Ned Morgan had returned to town for his team after finishing his business hat
James Graham’s ranch. Now Graham, his wife, two sons, and two hired hands, lie
under one hundred feet of limestone boulders.
The men who had decided to sleep out on the recreation field after the ballgame
were gone. No one knew their names, or where they were from - or how many men
had been there.
The McVeigh and Poupore railway workers camp had been wiped out - along with
John McVeigh. All those workers who went by nicknames, or didn’t want to use
their own names for some reason, were gone. When Jack Leonard returned from
Pincher Creek with hay later that morning, he found that all his friends and
co-workers were dead.
The livery stable, Robert Watt, the livery stable manager, his assistant Francis
Rouchette, and all the horses were gone. Watt’s body was never found.
In the row of small miner’s houses along the east side of the creek, chaos
reigned. John Watkins was in the mine, but his wife and three children were
asleep in the house. Two of the children were found pinned in the house and were
rescued. Later the youngest was found alive, lying behind a large boulder. But
Mrs. Watkins had disappeared.
Next door, in the Ennis home, Mr. and Mrs. Ennis and their four children
extracted themselves from the rubble - Mrs. Watkins was found in their house,
badly injured as she had been swept by the rocks further down the slope from her
own home.
The Leitch family lived next door. Mr. and Mrs. Leitch and their five sons were
killed. Two of their three daughters were found alive, trapped under a fallen
beam, but the youngest, Marion, a tiny baby, couldn’t be found anywhere. In the
most miraculous act of all, she was found alive, lying on a bale of hay among
the rocks. The slide had swept through the livery stable before it hit her
house. A bale of hay had randomly hit her, and swept her up, carrying her along
the “crest” of the rock slide, and depositing her safely at the base of the
slide.
Newly wed Thomas Dewlap had left his bride in the hotel, while he crossed the
creek to his job in the power plant at the base of the mountain. The entire
powerplant was buried under tons of rock. He was never seen again.
William Warrington, a miner, had left his wife and three children safely asleep
when he left for his midnight shift. His house was completely smashed - killing
all within.
Mr. Bansemer had become disillusioned with the town of Frank, and had decided to
move his family to a homestead some distance away. He’d left his wife and seven
children behind, while he took his two eldest sons to move a load of belongings
to his new homestead.. The Bansemer house was moved completely off its
foundations - with Mrs. Basemer and all the children left bruised but alive.
In the Ackroyd house, Mr. and Mrs. Ackyrod were killed, while their very young
son was swept away by the slide. He found himself awakening beside the river,
with a slat from the feather bed sticking out of his side.
One small house held six Lancashire miners who had just arrived - no one even
knew their names. They were all killed.
Across the eastern flats, numerous small houses and farms were wiped out - some
people were well known in the community, some were stranger. Now they were gone.
In the mine, the seventeen remaining miners had been alerted by the tremendous
crash, and thought there’d been a major explosion in the mine. They all ran for
the mine entrance, only to find it a jagged jumble of rocks and timbers. William
Warrrington fell, breaking his leg. Another miner wrenched his leg badly. The
foreman, Joe Chapman, estimated that the rocks had penetrated about three
hundred feet into the mine tunnel.
They had no idea what was going on outside the mine, but they had made one
devastating discovery - the mine was beginning to flood. Unbeknownst to them,
the Old Man River, which flowed through the south side of the town near the
mountain, had been dammed up by the avalanche. Now the water was backing up into
the mine.
A quick exploration by others in the mine determined that all the air vents had
been blocked off, and that they were in danger of suffocating, if they didn’t
drown first. Someone mentioned that there was a coal seam that went towards the
surface of the mountain in another part of the mine. After some futile digging
at the entrance, all the men went back to the coal seam, and began digging. They
had no idea how far they were under the surface of the mountain - thirty feet or
three hundred?
In the town of Frank, the police constable tried to take charge of the growingly
frantic population. The rising Old Man River and Gold Creek, dammed up by the
slide debris, made travel to the mine almost impossible. Finally, some of the
men built a wooden raft, and floated across the rising water to the mill
entrance.
On the outside of the mine, rescue workers were searching frantically for the
entrance. The mine engineer, using his plans and a transom, finally found the
location. They realized then that at a jumble of rock at least three hundred
feet deep lie across the mine entrance. While they tried to control their
despair, they began to dig.
The miners trapped inside worked all day digging into the seam of coal, taking
turns as their oxygen supply began to decrease, and the water crept closer.
Finally all but two of the miners stopped in despair. These two remained
working, and finally Dan McKenzie’s
pick went through the outer surface of the mountain. They were through! As they
started to emerge from the shaft and took deep breathes of fresh air, they began
to realize the extent of the devastation below them - and to rush down the
slope, looking for their own houses.
Lillian Clark waited as the miners stumbled in, looking for her father to tell
him the tragedy of his wife and children’s death. He wasn’t there. She now knew
that she was the sole survivor of her family.
William Warrington, the miner who’d broken his leg, was carried down the slope
on a door. When he reached the bottom, he was greeted with the news that his
wife and three children were dead.
John Watkins, another miner, found his three children bruised but all right, and
his wife, although badly injured, was alive.
Although all the telegraph lines to the east were down, the lines to the west
were intact, and messages were sent to Cranbrook telling of the disaster and
asking for assistance. The C.P.R. sent a train to evacuate the remaining
residents of the town, while the Northwest Mounted Police sent reinforcements by
horseback from both Pincher Creek and Calgary.
Along with the rescuers came newspapermen to report on the great disaster. H.L.
Frank’s brother came to the town, while H.L. himself remained in France, trying
to raise capital for his town. When news of the disaster reached him, he was
devastated.
Rescuers worked on for weeks to uncover other victims, but few were ever found.
The mine entrance was eventually cleared and on May 30, one month after the
tragedy, workers re-entered the mine. They were astounded to find one remaining
mine workhorse, “Charly”, still alive, although very weak. He had been drinking
seepage and chewing mine timbers as he waited to be rescued. He was given a
hero’s welcome by the townsfolk.
The town never regained its earlier momentum, as most people were afraid to live
in the shadow of the mountain, which had been named “Turtle” by the Indians -
who had legends that it “moved”. More faults were found in the rock above the
town, and gradually Frank turned into a ghost town, as its residents moved on
and repaired their lives as best they could.
As for H.L. Frank, the founder of the mining boom town - he died in a
sanitarium, a broken man - in 1908.
Contact Information
Trudy Handel
Winterhawk Productions Inc.
- Telephone
- 604 533-3220
- Postal address
- 23395 0 Avenue, Langley, B.C. Canada V2Z 2X3
- Electronic mail
- General Information:
thandel@shaw.ca
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