← National Park After Dark
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- [00:02]
A
Each year, millions of people venture to the Canadian Rockies, home to national parks like Banff and Jasper, and wildlife like the Boss, the famous grizzly that dominates Bow Valley, and gray wolves whose howls echo across Lake Louise. But most of the photos you see of this area are of the mountains themselves. Snow covered peaks tower above sparkling glacial blue lakes. Walls of rock looming dramatically over the highway are some of the most photographed peaks in all of North America. The Iceline Parkway, the route that winds about 140 miles through the heart of it all, is often crowned the world's most scenic. And an entire outdoor community, economy and culture has sprung up out of the belief that there's no place you'd rather be than on top of those mountains. Not just the Rockies, but mountains anywhere, online or outside. You're bombarded by Gore Tex fashion trail running shoes, summit selfies, freeze dried food, climbing guides, gondola rides, Nalgene Pride, alltrails, review ultralight gear, and summit beers, all seemingly poking and prodding and promising that you could be no happier in life than you would be at the top of a mountain. And maybe they're right. When you reach a mountaintop, outside noise tends to fade away. You breathe deeper, see further. And although you cannot stay, you carry that feeling of the moment back down the mountain with you. At least that's how it normally works. But back in 1903, for one unlucky town in what is now Alberta, the mountaintop came down to them. Welcome to National Park After Dark.
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B
I'm personally happiest on top of a mountain ever.
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A
Period. Full stop. I'm not. I'll just say that right now it's pretty. It's up there.
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B
It's pretty high up there.
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A
Top five. Yeah. Hey, everyone, this is National Park After Dark. And this voice right now is Danielle.
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B
And I'm Cassie.
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A
And we won a Webby.
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B
We did. You guys voted for us and we won. Didn't we win two? We won two Webbies. Yeah.
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A
Excuse me, it was two.
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B
Yeah, two Webbies. You guys helped us out hard because you voted for us and we won the People's Choice Webby. But then we also won just the Webby Award in the history podcasting section, where the judges picked us to be the winners, which is really exciting.
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A
So thank you so very much. It's quite an honor to be not only considered, but also chosen two times over. So it's great. It feels good. Feels great.
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B
Five years doing this and it's cool that we won the history section too, because that is kind of how we woven into this podcast is mostly history. I know we dive into the dark history, but it's mostly history.
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A
We've slowly backed away carefully from the true crime box. Yes.
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B
We're still in it a little bit. Like, we got, like, we got one. We had, like, a foot in there.
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A
So. Anyway, thank you. We just wanted to say that up top before we got into guess what? Another story from times long past 1903.
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B
Is that the year of our Lord?
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A
No. I don't know. I just like saying that.
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B
Like, what happened in 1903?
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A
I'm not sure. I think the Lord had been long gone by then, but I also don't know much about that. But, yeah, we are going to be in 1903, and we're going to be in an area that we haven't quite visited. But we were really, really, really close when we went on our group trip to Jasper, Banff, and Yoho National Parks. And I had to sneak in the boss in the ice line in the intro because the boss.
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B
If you don't know who the boss is, Google him right now.
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A
Oh, I should have worn shirts. Yeah.
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B
If I had known.
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A
I know. Sorry I didn't prep.
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B
Yeah.
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A
For that.
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B
We could have matched.
- [04:10]
A
We couldn't be farther from matching. Right now. You look like a highlighter, especially with your pants. They're like salmon.
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B
They are salmon. You can't see me because I'm in a blanket.
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A
So you're in salmon, green and blue. And I'm in. I'm not wearing one other color other than black from head to toe. Yeah. It's all right. I like us this way. Okay. All right, so, yeah, let's get on to the story. Just 40 miles from the Canada US border and a few hours north from Glacier National Park, Cronest Pass crosses the Rocky Mountains. The area has been an important passageway through the mountains for a very long time. Stone tools and artifacts trace human history back to the last Ice age at least 11,000 years ago. The gentle, low elevation route through the mountains made it a crucial corridor for the Tunaha and Picani, or Blackfoot people. The Tunaha's traditional territory of the mountains and the Pakani's territory of the Great Plains made Crow's Nest Pass a natural place for trade and transportation. And in the 1800s, as Canadian settlers and industry started to expand west, it became a route along the Canadian Pacific Railway, the first transcontinental railroad in all of Canada. The arrival of industry transformed what would later become Alberta. And one of the settlers that came along with the railway Was a man named Samuel gebo, A prospector in the mining business. After catching wind of coal in crowsnest pass, he bought a claim at the base of turtle mountain and set out to attract laborers. He secured some financial banking From a wealthy montanan named Henry frank. And together they founded a coal company, Started digging, and started to build a town. Soon it would have all the amenities Of a modern frontier town. So think, you know, a classic boomtown. Churches, schools, hotels, banks, horse stables, Town hall just kind of popped up very quickly, Seemingly overnight. To attract a large workforce, they built boarding houses for single men and homes for the married workers and all of their families. Samuel gebo would become the mine overseer and the postmaster, And Henry frank, the big time investor, of course, Named the town after himself. So the town is named Frank.
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B
Wow. Thrilling. I live in Frank
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A
far and wide. The two men promised that Frank was home to the world's richest coal mine. And to get people to move there, they threw an enormous gala to launch the town in 1901. In newspaper ads, they boasted fresh fruit and ice cream Shipped all the way from spokane. They had football and lacrosse matches and more, all for free. And of course, assuming you paid your own way to get there. But once you were there, all this stuff was free and it worked. Over 900 people from far and wide Attended the festivals, and in just a few short years, some 600 people called Frank home. So it's like they threw a huge party to get people to populate the town.
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B
Like, isn't this cool?
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A
They're like, look, we have ice cream.
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B
I mean, ice cream. It's a big deal. Really good way to get people in. It's been bringing people together for millennia,
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A
since the year of Our Lord.
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B
Yeah, 1903. I'll never forget it.
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A
They even had their own newspaper, Although by some accounts, the guy who wrote it didn't know how to spell very well. But he did his best, and that's all that matters. Some of the residents worked in the mines. Others worked for the railroad, Ran different businesses, or ran households While their husbands worked underground. The mine itself dug straight into turtle mountain, the peak that rose 3,000ft over the new boomtown. And. And in a few short years, the investment seemed to be paying off. Coal was plentiful and easy to access There, Running like a wide vein throughout the rock of the mountain. The main tunnel of the mine ran for nearly a mile along the coal seam, which was around 14ft thick on average. Miners dug upward into the seam, Excavating as much as they could by Hand with picks and shovels. Every now and again, they left some large pillars behind to support the growing network of tunnels. Excavated coal was then loaded into rail cars, pulled to the surface by horses, and sorted in a building called the tipple, which will be relevant in a little bit. So all of this to say the mine was prosperous at this time. It was making a ton of money. There was a ton of coal. It was easy to get. And Jibo and Frank set an ambitious goal of mining a thousand tons of coal per day and had big, big dreams of turning Frank into the next Pittsburgh, which was a model of industrial transformation like they were advertising it as. Yeah, it's small now, but there's a lot of potential here. And you just wait. It's gonna be the next Pittsburgh.
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B
So I don't know much about Pittsburgh, but it sounds like a big deal.
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A
Pittsburgh was a big deal back then, let me tell you. I feel like maybe it still.
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B
Still is. I don't want anyone to want a big place. I've just never spent time there, so I don't know anything about it.
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A
Me neither, actually, other than they have driven through.
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B
Yeah, I guess we'll have to go.
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A
But as time went on, some of the miners noticed rumblings within Turtle Mountain. You can expect some noises in the mining business, of course, as if the rock around you was settling reluctantly into a new shape. But within Turtle Mountain, the noises were extreme. They were deeper, louder and longer, with rumbles and groans that the workers had never heard before. Coal was seen slumping outward in recently carved walls. And this was not the first sign that something was off about this mountain, because before the town of Frank was established, Pikani and Tunaha tribal members offered a warning to the area's new white settlers. Do not build your homes here. What Canadians called Turtle Mountain first nations described as the mountain that moves. The indigenous nations had watched rocks fall from the mountain before and passed warnings down to their children through oral tradition to steer clear of this place. And even as first nations were losing their traditional lands to white settlers, having their ways of life disrupted by railroads, reservations, and extractive industries like mining, they passed their warnings onto these new European settlers as well. This mountain is not safe. Do not build your homes underneath it. And, of course, those warnings were ignored. It's always tough to try to explain geology with just words or, like, in any sort of way, because I'm a webby award and receiver in the history category.
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B
Not geology.
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A
Not geology. But I'll do my best here. But I will include some pictures in the Video version and on our socials and stuff, because there are some visual representations that are illustrative to what I'm about to try and say, but essentially, Turtle Mountain was like a house of cards holding up a giant boulder. Millions of years ago, before the Rocky Mountains existed, the ground that became Crow's Nest Pass was made of two main layers. There was heavy limestone on the bottom and a weaker mix of sandstone on top. So if we're doing some food references here, let's go with pumpkin pie because it's pretty apt.
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B
Okay, Okay.
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A
I know you just gave me a side eye, but.
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B
So pumpkin pie Mountain.
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A
Got it, Got it. Okay, we're locked in. So the sturdy, flaky crust is the limestone, and then the filling, the pumpkin, is the softer sandstone. Okay, okay, so we got that.
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B
I'm hungry. Sorry.
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A
I know it is right before dinner that we're doing this, but as tectonic forces pushed the Rocky Mountains together, those layers were forced upward, bending up and up into the shape of a capital A before eventually, the stress became too great. The layers buckled, and one half climbed on top of the other. What was once the bottommost layer of limestone crashed over the sandstone like a slow motion wave. And so, to go back to our pumpkin pie analogy, you can imagine why this would be precarious. The pie crust that is now the top of Turtle Mountain is sitting on top of the weak layer of pie filling. It can hold it maybe for a little bit, but it's going to be pretty wiggly. So we're reversed here. It's not good.
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B
Okay. Not good.
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A
To make matters worse, ice Age glaciers carved away at both of these layers, making them weaker and steeper. And the Crow's Nest river, which flowed at the base of the mountain, was steadily carving away more and more of its foundation. And then there was the mining operation. The coal seam that miners were digging into and trying to remove, you know, those 1,000 tons every single day that was being carved into the pie filling that we're talking about, the softer. Right.
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B
They're pulling out the apples. I mean, I'm picturing apple pie pulling out the pumpkin. This whole time I've been tuning.
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A
They're tunneling apple pie. Oh, my God. The whole analogy is ruined. We got to start over. No. Yeah. They're carving these tunnels through that weaker sandstone that's already compromised and not very solid. So they were digging miles and miles of tunnels directly into the soft sandstone and slate holding up the. Which was holding up that entire mountain. At this point, it was the perfect storm of Tectonics and time, gravity and greed. And the final straw was water and ice. April of 1903 had been very warm, causing snowmelt to trickle down into the cracked limestone at the top of Turtle Mountain. But suddenly, on the night of April 28th.
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B
Wait a second, it's April 27th when we're recording this, it's like, I chose
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A
this for a reason. Wow.
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B
We do this kind of a lot.
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A
I know I really didn't do it intentionally, but we never do. So. The night of April 28, the temperatures plunged to zero degrees Fahrenheit. And the water that had melted in the days before still working its way through all the crevices of the rock, now turned to ice, bulging outwards and working to wedge open the tiny cracks in Turtle mountain. And at 4:10am on April 29, the entire east face of Turtle Mountain broke loose. As if out of nowhere, an almighty clap of thunder erupted from above, and the churning, grinding mass of rocks emitted a sound like a freight train, or to some, the sound of steam escaping at a high pressure. Boulders the size of houses reached speeds of over 70 miles an hour, launched into the air, clashed together and rammed into the valley floor with terrible thuds. Some 90 million tons of rock crashed down into Crowsnest Pass. That. That's nearly the weight of 2000 Titanics piled one on top of another.
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B
That's a lot of Titanics.
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A
Ahead of the slide was a wall of wind that crashed into the landscape like a shock wave of a bomb. By one legend. People in the town of Cochrane, about a hundred miles away, heard this slide, describing it like the sound of a giant gunshot.
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B
We've been to Cochrane or driven through it. Yeah, you drive through it on your way to Banff and I've been there before because they have a wolf sanctuary there.
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A
Oh, yeah, I didn't know that. We've been there.
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B
Well, we drive. You drive through it on the highway and then you have to get off and you're not, like, technically in it, but you're like. I mean, you're technically in it. I've seen it. Yeah, you've seen it from afar.
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A
As rocks hit the valley floor, it dammed the Crow's Nest river before surging like water out across the valley. The churning rockfall kicked up an enormous cloud of dust, charged with enough static electricity that it generated its own lightning. Eventually, it came to a stop a mile from the mountain's base, blanketing an area almost the size of Central park, or about 500 football fields. The field of boulders and debris was 45 deep in some places and 100ft deep in others. And it's truly astonishing. Even after seeing pictures, it's hard to wrap your mind around just how devastating this slide was. Frank anderson, the author of a 1968 book about the slide, Put it this way. It would conservatively take 100 gravel trucks carrying 3 tons per load, making 10 trips a day, an estimated 66 years to remove the debris from this slide. Yet the entire thing was over in 90 seconds.
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B
Wow. That's incredible. That's crazy to even think about the noise. I mean, no, you mentioned it already, that it could be heard so far away, but that happening so fast and that amount of rubble, it must, and with no warning.
- [17:22]
A
And I know I just kind of described all the warnings that were happening geologically. And, of course, the indigenous nations knew that trouble was afoot. It was unstable. But I'm saying in the immediate, you know, it pour something in the morning, right? Yep. Of the 600 people who lived in Frank, about 100 of them were believed to be in harm's way, like in the path of this slide. At the time of the slide, most people in frank were, like we just said, asleep, Including a miner named Jim warrington. Early in the morning, Warrington woke up to what he thought was the sound of roaring hail. But as soon as he had leapt out of bed, the wave of rocks carried him and his house 40ft away before coming to a stop. Pinned by boulders and debris. With a newly broken hip, he shouted for help. And as rescuers dug him out, he felt something soft beneath him. Rescuers kept digging after freeing warrington and found his neighbor, Mrs. Watkins. She incredibly suffered some wounds, but she was miraculously alive and lived.
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B
And how far did she live? Like you said, they were neighbors. Do you know how close they were?
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A
I have no idea how close she had been launched or propelled by this slide, but he had been moved 40ft in his home.
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B
And then this woman was found underneath him, Also underneath him. And was a neighbor from whoever knows how far apart. Wow.
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A
John mcveigh was a construction manager with the canadian pacific railway who was building a new line out of frank. Normally, mcveigh spent nights with his wife and child in the nearby town of blairmore. But since they were off visiting family in calgary that week, he decided he would just stay with his crew and frank. That night, he and his 11 staff, asleep at their construction camp, Were all killed. One of the few people awake at the time Was another railroad worker Named sid choquette. That morning, he was helping load coal Onto a freight train headed out of town, and when the mountain broke loose, the train's engineer floored it. Sid clung to the outside of the train as it raced across a wooden bridge, making it to the other side within seconds before the bridge exploded into splinters behind them, immensely relieved to be alive after such a close call. For sure. But Sid didn't rest long. He realized that if the bridge was down, so was the telegraph line that could warn oncoming trains about the slide. And this was a big deal because there was another train called the Spokane Flyer. It was a passenger train, and it was due to pull into Frank that morning, like at dawn. So just a couple hours after the slide occurred. So Sid ended up running over a mile across the loose broken rock through all those clouds of dust. I mean, this thing you you couldn't even see your hand in front of your like the amount of dust and debris in the air. All in an effort to stop the train and save the people who are aboard. And once again, he made it just in time. So he saved all of those people in this Go, go Go world Making a stop at a blind store is probably not on the top of your I have a lot of time for this list. We can shop for nearly everything from home and luckily with three Day Blinds they bring the showroom to you. 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I was scrolling the three day blind Instagram recently and getting a ton of inspiration for my room because I'm redoing it soon and curtains really do just bring the room together in all of the right ways right now. Get quality window treatments that fit your budget with three day blinds. Head to 3dayblinds.com.NPAD for their buy one get one 50% off deal on custom blinds, shades, shutters and drapery for a free no charge, no obligation consultation. Just head to 3dayblinds.com NPAD one last time. That's buy one, get one 50% off when you head to the number 3D a Y blinds.com NPAD staying consistent while on the go has been the struggle of my adult life, especially as I've been traveling more. But one of my non negotiables has been getting daily walks in and at home with Chaska. It's easy to do that, but when I'm traveling it's easy to fall off track. But it's important to keep up with rituals that make me feel good. Another thing that makes me feel good is cachava. So I am thrilled that they now have travel packs because my favorite all in one nutrition shake is now mobile baby. I can keep my morning routine the same by throwing packs in my suitcase or my backpack. Cassie was actually here for the night the other week filming our Hulu special and asked me if she could have some of my kajava for breakfast because she had been so thrilled with how energized and good she feels after starting her days with it. And I was like, oh honey, name your flavor. I have them all. Just one packet provides complete nutrition for life on the go with protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals, greens, probiotics, omegas, electrolytes and more. And all without artificial flavors, gluten, preservatives or animal products. And now for those of us on the go, especially with summer season right around the corner, you are set to take all that delicious goodness with you in their travel packs. Take your daily ritual with you. Go to kachava.com and use code NPAD for 15% off your first order. That's Kachava K-A C H-A-V-A.com code NPAD John Thonley owned a shoe repair shop on the eastern flats of town right by the Miners Houses. And that week his sister Ellen had been visiting him from out of town but was headed back home on an early train the following morning. And as a treat, John actually suggested that they stay in town at the hotel so they wouldn't have to rush because his shoe repair shop and his home were just like on the outskirts of town. He's like, it'll be a treat like we won't have to rush in the morning. You can sleep in a little bit, have an easier going morning. And the decision actually ended up saving their lives because his store was completely
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B
obliterated and buried that's the universe looking out for you.
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A
It sure is. And this is another one in its own way, even though there's tragedy also. So Lillian Clark was the oldest of six kids, and she had a job at the boarding house in Frank. That day had been really long at work. She had stayed late finishing all of her tasks for the day. And like many frontier boom towns, the main street got pretty rowdy late at night. It was kind of like a lawless type of place. And rather than walk home in the dark, Lillian's boss offered her a room to stay in so she could walk home the next morning in a more safe environment. And Lillian hesitated at this because she had never once in her life stayed away from her family. She had never spent a night outside of her home before. And she talked to her mom about it, and her mom did give her permission to stay the night. So she did. Her mom, her six siblings and her father were all killed in the slide.
- [25:16]
B
Ugh, that's awful.
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A
And finally.
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B
But she survived.
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A
She survived because she was at. She stayed overnight at work that was unaffected by the slide because it wasn't in the path of the rock slide. And then finally, there's a story that's actually pretty popular when this event is brought up. And it's also pretty exaggerated, but it's the story of a baby. So the Leech family owned a respected grocery and furniture store in town which supported their growing family. The parents, Alexander and Rosemary, their four sons and three daughters comprised this family. And all of them were asleep in their home when the slide happened. Happened. And it quickly overtook their house. It completely obliterated it. And in the legends that spread afterwards, rescuers who raced to the Leech house found that everyone in the house had died except, by some miracle, the youngest, a 1 1/2 year old girl, was found outside of the home, apparently thrown from the house out of a window and into a nearby bale of hay. And she was found crying, but unharmed. And as the legend goes, since nobody knew her name, because there was no survivors of her family, the townspeople named her Frankie.
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B
They're like, this is just after the town.
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A
After the town. Once again, after the town.
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B
Everything is Frank, even the girl.
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A
But in reality, there is some truth to this story. The girl was genuinely thrown from the house through some sort of opening, whether it was a window or if, like, the walls disintegrated. And she was thrown out, probably by the blast of wind that came first, because remember the. The wind preceded the rock slide. But she was not totally alone. Her Two sisters also survived. The iron frame of their bed actually protected them from the full weight of the collapsing debris of their home. And it kind of. So even though it pinned them, it shielded them from the brunt force of the collapse of the house. And they lived. And of course, they knew her. Their sister's name, and it was Marian, not Frankie.
- [27:37]
B
So they're just really trying to push the Frank thing.
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A
They are. They're selling Frank hard. It's like, okay, that's our sister. She has a name.
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B
She's almost here. She has a name. And we're alive also, by the way.
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A
Also, yes. Of the 100 people in the slide's path, at least 70 of them were killed. But as rescuers poured over the Boulder Field, only 20 bodies were ever recovered. Everyone who was found alive in the rubble. As rescuers were going through in searching for survivors, they actually all survived their injuries, which is pretty incredible. And I say at least 70 people were killed because the records were pretty shoddy at this time. And a lot of the records of the town were buried and not retrieved.
- [28:25]
B
And it sounds like a lot of people visit this area, too.
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A
So a lot of people were visiting, and a lot of people were working in the mines and kind of just passing through and staying at boarding houses. So it's just kind of like there wasn't an official register of every single person who was there at the time. So it's just kind of a best guess. However, as the sun rose on the next day, as the dust was Starting to settle, 17 men were still fighting for their lives because they were trapped underground in the mines.
- [28:59]
B
There were people working. Were they working in the mines when this.
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A
Yes.
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B
Whoa.
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A
When the Frank slide began, 20 miners were working their night shift, and three of them were taking their lunch break up at the surface, sitting around the tipple, that place that I described earlier for processing the coal, the building where it gets all sorted out and stuff. One of these men was named Alfred Clark, whose daughter Lillian was spending the night at the boarding house where she worked. So that's how her father died, the one that stayed. And her whole family got killed. So her mom and all her siblings were at her home, who got that, Got obliterated. And her dad was taking his lunch break. That was in the direct path of the slide. So all three of these men who were taking their break were killed. And one of their bodies was recovered over a quarter of a mile away.
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B
Wow.
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A
The 17 remaining men that were on shift that that night were all underground and in the mines even during Daytime, of course, you needed handheld safety lights to see anything. Joe Chapman was the shift foreman that night, and he was working about a mile from the mine's entrance to when the world began to shake, followed by a blast of air that knocked him completely off his feet. The gusts slammed Chapman and many others right into a wall, blew out their lights, and blew over the horses that they had inside to pull the mine carts. Rocks fell from the ceiling and pinned miner William Warrington in place, but friends were thankfully able to act quickly and dig him out, and they started to formulate a plan. Some of them feared it was an explosion because they were unaware that the whole ass mountain just collapsed and obliterated everything. They thought that it was something that happened due to mining activities directly, like maybe the methane gas ignited and there was an explosion and they just weren't sure. But whatever caused the shaking, they knew they had to get back to the entrance. As the 17 men ran the long way back, the tunnels heaved and buckled. Coal rained down from above. And when they arrived at the entrance, they discovered it had completely collapsed, creating a wall of rock and shattered wooden support beams. They were entombed.
- [31:22]
B
That's my nightmare also, because I'm a little claustrophobic, but you're essentially buried alive.
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A
Yeah, yeah, you are. And of course this is bad. Everyone's like, okay, this is an oh shit moment. But the main entrance wasn't the only way to get out. There were other openings that they used as airways, so they began to check them. They checked the air shaft beneath the main entrance, only to find that it was not only blocked, but it was rapidly filling with water. This slide had dammed the Crow's Nest river and nearby Gold Creek, and this wave of water threatened to drown them if it kept rising. So that's your nightmare.
- [31:58]
B
My other nightmare. That one is actually the worst case scenario. It's like you're buried alive and now it's being filled with water.
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A
Yep. Others rushed a mile back into the mines to check the other airways, which were also blocked. Without any airflow, the oxygen in the mines would steadily drop, while deadly levels of coal gas would build. If they didn't get out soon, they would all die. In a panic, some of them tried to dig their way out of the main entrance, but the limestone boulders were much harder than they had anticipated and halted their progress. In a last ditch effort, one of the miners proposed a Hail Mary. Rather than digging out through the collapsed entrance, what if they dug upwards, straight through the coal seam and punched their way through the mountain? That Way smart, innovative. Yeah.
- [32:52]
B
Depending on how close you are to the top of the mountain.
- [32:55]
A
Yes. Yeah.
- [32:56]
B
Otherwise it's just like 7,000ft up.
- [33:02]
A
Starting at 7am the men rotated in teams of two or three at a time and made slow but steady progress. Because this coal seam is also, remember, pretty narrow. So not all people can be working at one time. They sang to keep their spirits high until the oxygen started to lower. Okay, maybe we shouldn't sing.
- [33:24]
B
Maybe we're actually taking up all of our oxygen right now. Just leave one designated singer.
- [33:31]
A
Yeah, one's fine. Actually. That's my nightmare. That's my nightmare. I don't want to be sung to. Please don't do that. Especially at a time like this, you
- [33:41]
B
know, it depends if they're good at singing. I could go for it.
- [33:45]
A
You got to keep Morel alive somehow. And I guess that's how it was done.
- [33:48]
B
Whistling, though. Oh, I'll be back in the water.
- [33:55]
A
Space was tight. The work was backbreaking and there was no guarantee of success as the hours ticked by. By 5pm they had been trapped for 13 hours and had been mining for 10. Most started to slump out of breath in pure exhaustion. Finally, as miner Dan McKenzie swung his pick, it broke through the ceiling and a ray of light shone into the mine and they were free. As Dan climbed onto the surface, he witnessed the havoc that the rock slide had wrought, describing it like a giant hand of limestone had covered the entire Valley just 50 yards downhill. He also spotted a rescue crew attempting to dig into the main mine entrance. So they're like, hey, over here.
- [34:40]
B
We're good. It's like, we beat you. We're out.
- [34:43]
A
All 17 miners who were trapped underground during Frank's slide escaped alive, a truly remarkable feat celebrated by the traumatized town. William Warrington, with a broken leg, was the only one seriously injured. But as Warrington arrived in town, he learned that his wife and seven children had all been killed.
- [35:05]
B
There's so much devastation with this. It's all big families.
- [35:10]
A
They're all huge families.
- [35:11]
B
Warrington had so many kids back then too. So like everyone, it's like you and your family have seven children. There's nine, ten of you.
- [35:19]
A
Yeah. And it seems like a very, a very close knit community also. So it's like even if you weren't affected, somebody you knew or were related to was.
- [35:31]
B
Especially if there's only 600 people. That's smaller than the town I grew up in. And my town had a thousand people.
- [35:37]
A
Yeah. And at least 70 of them, you
- [35:39]
B
know, were, you would definitely know in
- [35:43]
A
a 2003 documentary about the Frank slide called on the Edge of Destruction. They shared a heartbreaking quote from Warrington. My wife worried every time I went underground, he said, but she's the one who died. Gone. My whole family, none of them ever found. Which is just another layer of. And we talk about that all the time, so I won't harp on it, but.
- [36:04]
B
But it is. I remember you said at the beginning of this episode that the rock piles were, what did you say, 40ft deep, 100ft deep in other sections. And if you're. It feels like you just had to be lucky and be on top of the rubble or close to it to survive this and everyone else who was deeper in its path. I mean, with rock that is so heavy and a hundred feet deep, I understand how they weren't able to recover. Everybody.
- [36:34]
A
Yeah. The recovery efforts were almost non existent. It's kind of like you look at it and you understand that there's not much to be done. Yeah. As the miners dug themselves free, word of the disaster and Crow's Nest Pass spread very quickly. The following day, on the front page of the New York Times, an article read, mountain blown up and 95 killed. Disaster visits a mining town in Alberta province. Various theories on the cause of the explosion. Whole top of mountain slides into the valley. Danger of flood from dam formed by the rock. It's a very long title, but I get what they're talking about.
- [37:11]
B
That's a title. That's like a paragraph.
- [37:15]
A
Well, the title was Mountain blown up in 95 killed. And the subheader was those like 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 sentences. They didn't leave anything to the imagination. It's like you want to know.
- [37:25]
B
You don't even have to read the
- [37:26]
A
article, you know, and regarding, you know, what happened, kind of going back to the various theories thing. There were various theories. According to one report, most of the people in Frank believed that a volcano was responsible because they had seen fire during the slide. But in hindsight, that was likely due to the static electricity in the dust clouds or sparks from the rocks colliding themselves.
- [37:52]
B
I know what my theory is.
- [37:54]
A
You don't have a theory because I told you about the pumpkin pie.
- [37:57]
B
Yeah.
- [37:58]
A
Is that your theory?
- [37:59]
B
Well, that's my theory. That's what happened.
- [38:02]
A
Right. But the Canadian government wanted to get to the bottom of what happened because whatever it was may happen again. They sent in a team of senior geologists to determine what had happened. And they began to document the risk factors that we talked about earlier. The jumbled layers of Hard limestone and so sandstone, the freeze thaw process that pried the the rocks loose, and a river carving away at the base. While searching for explanations, they also concluded that the mine was at least partially to blame as well. Writing quote, it is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that these great chambers, 250 to 400ft high and 15ft wide, situated directly under the foot of the mountain, must have weakened it. It's like, yeah, yeah. And other newspapers began to share survival stories, like the Toronto Star planting the seeds of the baby Frankie legend almost right away. That kind of took shape almost immediately. Soon the town was reopened and began to rebuild because they evacuated for a couple of days, and then once it was given the all clear, some people decided to return. The Crowsnest river carved its way back through the debris, averting the risk of flooding that people feared. And although after the geologists made their report, the town was ultimately relocated a few miles away. The slide had created two distinct summits on Turtle Mountain, and there was reason to fear that the southern one was poised to slide again in the future. The Canadian Pacific Railroad, who lost at least a dozen employees to the disaster, rebuilt and reopened their line through Frank in just three weeks. They also awarded Sid Choquette with a letter of commendation for running over a mile over the broken rock to save their passenger train. And as a little bit of a thank you, they wrote him a check for 25 whole dollars for his bravery, which is close to a thousand bucks today.
- [40:03]
B
Okay, that's nice. That is nice. He's just helping and they gave him something, so that's nice.
- [40:10]
A
Yeah. The owners of the Frank mine also rushed to reopen, rejecting any of the blame placed at their feet by geologists.
- [40:18]
B
Okay, that is so tone deaf to do that. I understand that's probably their livelihood and stuff, but an entire town, not entire town, but a massive part of the town was just wiped out. And so many people died. And to be like, we're back in operation.
- [40:35]
A
Right. I'm sure with no improvements to structural integrity or safety or anything like that. Like, there's one thing to be to recognize, hey, this is a business. We need to keep our doors open and production going, but also taking ownership and claiming responsibility and altering.
- [40:58]
B
They lost workers.
- [41:00]
A
Right.
- [41:01]
B
You know, it's like those men who were in the mountains were your employees and you're just gonna send them that died and you're just gonna send the survivors back in with no changes and. Right. Right away. But.
- [41:16]
A
Well, after just a month, they were open for business with a newly reinforced entrance because the original one was totally wiped out. And while that alone, of course, is a little shocking, after all this, it's like.
- [41:30]
B
Okay.
- [41:31]
A
I guess the biggest surprise at the time was that when they finally got back into the tunnels, one of the three workhorses who had been trapped inside was still alive.
- [41:42]
B
Whoa. After a month.
- [41:43]
A
Yeah. His name was Charlie, and he had survived a month in complete darkness by drinking puddles of floodwater, sucking on his harness, and gnawing at the wooden beams that held the tunnels open.
- [41:54]
B
Oh, my God.
- [41:55]
A
Miners rushed to give him a hearty meal of oats and brandy, but they were just a little bit too late because he collapsed shortly after and died after being found.
- [42:06]
B
No, no, Charlie.
- [42:08]
A
No.
- [42:09]
B
I thought that was like a light at the end of the tunnel story.
- [42:12]
A
I almost didn't include it because he died anyway. But I think it's pretty incredible.
- [42:16]
B
It's incredible. That horse survived a whole month.
- [42:22]
A
Yeah. And there's a picture. I'm not gonna post it because he's dead, but there is a picture of a couple of the miners at the entrance that they just unveiled and opened again. And Charlie's there.
- [42:34]
B
Wow.
- [42:35]
A
Like, right before he collapsed or right after he collapsed. Okay. But I don't think this is a surprise, but most of the survivors opted to move away from Frank, even though they relocated the town a couple miles away from the original site.
- [42:51]
B
Yeah.
- [42:55]
A
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- [43:11]
B
I don't know about you, but I
- [43:12]
C
like keeping my money where I can actually see it. Unfortunately, traditional big wireless carriers seem to like keeping my money too. Between high monthly bills, random fees, and
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B
those free perks that somehow cost more, it really adds up.
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C
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- [44:34]
A
Jim Warrington, who was carried 40ft from his bed that night with the broken hip, moved to a nearby town called Blairmore. Lillian Clark, the only member of her family to survive because she spent the night at the boarding house, moved to live with her uncle in Washington State. Marion Leach, known as Baby Frankie, moved with her sisters to Cranbrook, British Columbia and was raised by her aunt and uncle. Henry Frank, the investor who named the town after himself, reportedly never recovered from the shock of the rock slide. Within five years, his mental health had declined so much that he was confined to a private sanatorium in Butte, Montana, tortured by memories of the disaster and his ill fated mining venture. He died in 1908.
- [45:20]
B
That's super sad.
- [45:21]
A
So it feels like he had a very, very severe case of survivor's guilt and took a lot of responsibility to heart and was just shattered.
- [45:34]
B
I can't even imagine surviving something like that and what how you would feel afterwards.
- [45:40]
A
But not everybody moved or even quit mining as a result. One of the miners who survived being trapped underground was named Charles Elich, and he continued to work in mining for the next 10 years in and around this region. However, in a cruel twist of fate, kind of like a Final Destination scenario, Elick died 11 years after Frank Slide in the Hillcrest Mine explosion, which was Canada's worst mining disaster and a story all of its own. In time, life moved on in Crowsnest Pass. The Frank mine closed for good in 1918. But shortly after, locals started to look for gold in the rockslide debris because legends once again started to take hold. There was this rumor that had spread that the town bank and its safe, rumored to be filled with up to $500,000, had been buried by the slide, which caused generations of young people and treasure hunters and thrill seekers to comb the debris in hopes of finding this buried bank and all of its money.
- [46:52]
B
Interesting.
- [46:53]
A
Author J. William Kerr, who wrote a book about the slide, was one of those people. As a kid he remembered going and trying to look for this lost money, only to later find photos of the town that clearly show the old bank still standing. After the rock slide oh, no. It's like. Did anyone check this?
- [47:17]
B
It's like, this is so easy. There's a photo.
- [47:20]
A
It's right there. Yeah. It was not affected at all.
- [47:24]
B
There's no colds.
- [47:26]
A
In 1922, a road over Crowsnest Pass was paved over the slide, foreshadowing a growing tourism industry into the Canadian Rockies that would provide new incentives to protect the environment. While grading the road, workers came across the debris of a miner's home, entirely buried within the rubble with skeletonized remains of its occupants inside.
- [47:49]
B
Wow.
- [47:49]
A
The remains were never identified, but a memorial stands in the home's place with a bronze plaque dedicated to the victims of the Frank Slide disaster. And today, the Frank Slide Interpretive center looks out over the slide debris and tells the story of the town, the night the mountain fell and the people caught in harm's way. You can walk the trails through the debris field or hike up the 3,000ft in less than three miles to the top of Turtle Mountain, if you want. I. We just talked about how unstable it is, but that's your journey. The truth is, if the mountain were to move again, we would be a lot better prepared to catch it early this time. Thanks to Alberta Geological Survey, Turtle Mountain is one of the most monitored mountains in the entire world. Extensive ground penetrating radar scans map the face of the mountain 35 meters deep, helping scientists define fractures in the mountain and anticipate where future movements may occur. Since 2014, an automated radar system scans and analyzes nine zones on the mountain every eight and a half minutes and is set to alert specialists if a certain threshold of movement has been observed.
- [49:02]
B
Technology is pretty cool.
- [49:03]
A
Sometimes they're like, whoa, we gotta keep our eyes on this one. Yeah, it's about to go.
- [49:10]
B
This one moves as we were told in 1903 and.
- [49:14]
A
Yeah, before. Yeah. Hypersensitive GPS stations have been set up on Turtle's south peak to detect motion, able to detect if the rock moves even millimeters in any direction. Crazy. Like, I understand that they can do that. Yeah. Monitoring it in that way. But I don't want to say it's overkill, because it's clearly needed, but it's just kind of like, that's a lot of monitoring. So if and when Turtle Mountain slides again, we will definitely see it coming. In retelling the story of Frank Slide, we can honor those who lost their lives and celebrate the heroism of the survivors. As modern Canadians, Tunaha and Picani people have grappled with what we can learn from the story today. Some point to the warning that the miners ignored this mountain moves. We would all do well to observe the world around us and listen to its warning signs.
- [50:07]
B
And.
- [50:08]
A
And while nature is powerful, it is not immune to our meddling. Across the world, landslides, floods and wildfires have become more frequent and more destructive in recent decades, given at least in part by actions within our control. Destructive mining operations, greenhouse gas emissions, and short sighted logging practices. Today, trees have started to poke through part of the boulder field beneath Turtle Mountain. The Crow's Nest river carved its way back through the debris. And for all of the harm that the Frank Slide caused, as Frank Anderson, the author of the book about the slide, says, the slide is a gigantic tombstone and probably the most awe inspiring in the world. So if you'd like to visit for yourself, the Interpretive center, which opened on April 28, 1985, is at the base of the mountain, less than two hours north of Glacier national park and Waterton Lakes National Park. And I was looking at the center's website, of course, during research and stuff and just kind of browsing the offerings that they have because they have. I mean it is right on top of the slide. It's actually pretty cool.
- [51:17]
B
The center is on top of the slide.
- [51:20]
A
It's like right near it and the trails are all on top of the boulder field. I mean if you're hiking, you're hiking through the actual boulder field on top of the town of Frank.
- [51:30]
B
So that's morbid.
- [51:31]
A
It's morbid for sure. But they have a ton of different programs and stuff. But I wanted to shout one out that I think is really cool. And if I took part in this as a kid, I think it would have changed my life. So I just wanted to shout it out in case there's like Canadian teachers out there that have power over where you take children on field trips. I don't know how that works, but the Interpretive center offers a bunch of different school programs. But there's one that's for grades seven through 12, I think it was. It's available all year round and it's called Killer Mountain csi. And it's a program where students become CSI recruits to examine a cold case, where they examine the case of Frank Slide in which nearly 100 people were killed. And they have to go about and like take this interpretive hike and hear all these presentations and then come up with what caused Turtle Mountain to become a killer. They take this one and a half mile or kilometer, sorry, guided trail, walk through the quote unquote crime scene, like the debris field, and they Examine all this evidence of, like, geologic evidence to solve this.
- [52:41]
B
Like, quote, another morbid teaching. I'm here for it.
- [52:45]
A
Isn't that cool, though? Like, that is how you capture imagination and attention.
- [52:51]
B
And attention. Especially when you're teaching history and geology. Like, geology kids are going to kill.
- [52:58]
A
I struggled for my life trying to tell you about pie. You know what I mean? Like, that was hard.
- [53:02]
B
And you told me pumpkin, and I pictured apple the whole time.
- [53:05]
A
Yeah. Like, we're not even on the same page. So it's like, it's just really cool that this is the type of stuff that exists now and you're conveying the same information just through a different approach that I think is just a little bit more memorable. But anyway, so I wanted to shout that out. And then two other things. I looked up the last survivor of the slide to pass away. Her name was Gladys Ennis Verquin, and she died in Bellevue, Washington, on March 20, 1993.
- [53:37]
B
Oh, we were alive.
- [53:38]
A
Yeah. She was 91.
- [53:39]
B
Wow.
- [53:40]
A
And then, because I love a hotel, we gotta end on this. Except there were buildings that still survived the slide. Right. You know, the whole entire town wasn't. Wasn't taken out. And the hotel where the brother and sister were staying, that saved their lives. The shoe repair shop guy and his sister, that hotel was called the Imperial Hotel. And of course, the building, I think it got damaged a little bit, but of course it was still standing. People lived. And following the slide, the hotel owner, Mr. A Mutts, had it, like, disassembled and shipped to Vulcan, which is a town just south of Calgary. And it was shipped in pieces and rebuilt in the town of Vulcan. And it reopened its doors in 1912, nine years after the Frank Slide tragedy. And it's still open today. Whoa.
- [54:36]
B
A historic hotel, that.
- [54:39]
A
And okay, I do have to say, before everyone's like, oh, my God. And googling it, I don't know if I would stay there.
- [54:48]
B
Okay.
- [54:48]
A
And I think it's seen better days before April 29th of 1903. But it's like. It's one of those things that if you looked at a picture, you would never guess it was a historic hotel ever.
- [55:01]
B
What's it called? I want to look at it.
- [55:03]
A
So it's called the Vulcan Hotel now, I think, because they renamed it, and it has really bad reviews. And it looks. Cassie, you would never. You would not stay there. It looks a little worse for wear. But I just wanted to shout out that it does exist. And it's just like a really cool example of an unassuming building you would never look twice at. And yet it has this crazy history of surviving a natural disaster, being disassembled, shipped, rebuilt, and open for over a hundred years.
- [55:37]
B
You have to be looking at the wrong thing. No.
- [55:39]
A
You think you are. You're not.
- [55:40]
B
Is there an African safari?
- [55:42]
A
Yes. Yes, there sure is.
- [55:46]
B
Yeah. It has a TV from like 1999 in one of the rooms. Yeah. Wow.
- [55:53]
A
And like, so I'm saying. I'm not saying go there. Okay. I feel like it exists. It exists. And I wanted to point that out.
- [56:02]
B
Wow.
- [56:03]
A
Yeah.
- [56:03]
B
Well, it has some good reviews on it though.
- [56:07]
A
Does it? I thought its overall rating was kind of bad. I mean, I do know. And I didn't want to get too.
- [56:13]
B
This one says, creepy place, but big rooms with cool themes.
- [56:17]
A
I don't even know if you know how creepy it actually is.
- [56:19]
B
Totally worthless.
- [56:23]
A
But like, in the actual the before it was disassembled and relocated, they had a lot of meetings there for recovery efforts and search efforts. A lot of people gathered in the hotel and it was just kind of a central location that was used directly after the slide and stuff. I don't know. It just has cool history, but. Yeah, I don't know.
- [56:45]
B
Interesting.
- [56:47]
A
Big rooms, but creepy apparently.
- [56:49]
B
Your choice if you guys want to stay there or not.
- [56:53]
A
So. Yeah, that's the story of the Frank Slide, which I believe remains the biggest in North American history.
- [57:01]
B
Whoa. It kind of reminded me of when you did the slide in to a small. This was a smaller scale, but in the White Mountains.
- [57:10]
A
Me?
- [57:11]
B
Yeah. You covered the slide that happened. Why am I blanking on the name of it?
- [57:17]
A
Oh, my God. I know the family.
- [57:19]
B
I'm blanking the name. I've been there.
- [57:21]
A
It starts with a W, I think.
- [57:23]
B
It does start with a W for sure. Shoot. Shoot.
- [57:29]
A
It's in the White Mountains National Forest.
- [57:30]
B
It is.
- [57:32]
A
And the family felt this landslide coming and they got so scared, they fled their home and they all got caught up and died in the slide. But because their home was like, underneath this rock ledge, the entire slide went all the way around their house. So their house actually survived. And they would have survived if they stayed in the home.
- [57:53]
B
And they left their dog behind. And their dog survived.
- [57:56]
A
Yeah.
- [57:56]
B
The Wiley house. Thank you. Yeah. The Wiley Slide in 1826 was in Crawford Notch. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It kind of reminded me of that episode a little bit. And that one, if people haven't listened to that episode yet, you should, because it's in our home state. But that one, they have a little house at the bottom. Or they have a. It's called the Wiley Rest Stop or the Wiley House, and it's a little coffee shop and gift shop and stuff. That's right there where it all happened.
- [58:27]
A
Yeah. The original house doesn't stand anymore, but it's on the site. Yeah. Yeah.
- [58:32]
B
Great.
- [58:32]
A
Well, there. There that is.
- [58:34]
B
There it is. Another one. Another one checked off.
- [58:38]
A
You did it. Oh, yeah. And so that this doesn't have a national park tie.
- [58:43]
B
Oh, yeah.
- [58:44]
A
If you didn't notice.
- [58:45]
B
Yeah. I heard you say, like, two hours north of Glacier in Waterton National Parks. And I was like. And the rest isn't in a national forest or a.
- [58:56]
A
No.
- [58:57]
B
Well, maybe it's in a forest.
- [59:01]
A
It's not located anywhere.
- [59:03]
B
It's nowhere.
- [59:04]
A
It's nowhere. Oh, my God.
- [59:08]
B
The first.
- [59:09]
A
But it was outside.
- [59:10]
B
It was outside.
- [59:12]
A
And it had to do with a mountain and a natural disaster and history.
- [59:16]
B
We're getting. We're going off the rails here.
- [59:19]
A
I know I'm going through something right now, and I didn't get bangs, but I decided to do this episode.
- [59:25]
B
This episode is the equivalent of getting bangs.
- [59:28]
A
It is for the podcast. So please forgive me during this time and respect my privacy.
- [59:35]
B
Well, while Danielle goes through this crisis, we hope you all enjoy the view,
- [59:42]
A
but watch your back.
- [59:43]
B
Bye, everyone.
- [59:44]
A
Bye.
- [59:47]
C
Thanks for joining us for another episode. We hope you learned something new and have another location to put on your list. If you want more NPAD content, make sure to follow along with our adventures on all socials at National Park After Dark.
- [59:59]
A
For more stories just like this one, with the added bonus of exclusive content, you can join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. If you prefer to watch our episodes, head over to our YouTube channel. And if you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review and subscribe on your favorite listening platform.