Have you ever explored a ghost town? If you’re one of the many people who pack into the Last Chance Saloon at the Wayne Hotel you have. Wayne is a ghost town near Drumheller where an estimated 28 people now reside, but that population balloons substantially when the popular saloon has a shindig going on!
I once made a couple of friends of mine drive out to Hemaruka with me, because I found the name so intriguing I thought about setting a novel there. Hemaruka, located three hours northeast of Calgary, is a name derived from the first two letters of Helen, Margaret, Ruth and Kathleen, the daughters of a longago railroad official. How cool is that? I’m sure they had some stories to tell. We poked around some abandoned buildings and had a picnic lunch on a grassy patch beside the highway, where every single vehicle that drove by honked at the unusual sight of us sitting there. All three vehicles, that is.
Many ghost towns in Alberta are a result of failed coal mining operations. There are about 85 official ghost towns in this province, which all had considerable populations once upon a time that dwindled down to a handful or disappeared completely. There’s an abandoned coal mining town right near Cascade Mountain near Banff that I’ve never known about, despite all the time I have spent there through the years. Nordegg is considered a ghost town, even though it has a designation as a site of national historic significance. So many of these places are surrounded by incredible beauty and countless tales.
Even towns pleasantly named things like Bliss, Faith, Flowerdale, Legend and Violet Grove didn’t make it. Of course, Frank is undoubtedly the most famous of Alberta’s ghost towns. This site of the deadliest landslide in Canadian history, located in the Crowsnest Pass, had nearly 1,200 residents in 1906. It’s an eery burial site, as between 70 and 90 of the town’s residents tragically died in the slide, and most of them remain buried in the rubble. But, again, it is a beautiful area and a popular route into BC, as travellers use the Crowsnest Pass Highway to connect with BC’s Highway 3 in the aptly named town of Hope.
Many people have researched and written extensively on ghost towns of Alberta. They are important pieces of this province’s history and the clues left behind point to interesting stories in many of them that are worth looking into.