allan
Weird fact that I learned today: The town of Banff is made up of at least 4 other towns that used to exist in the park.
Banff didn't expand and take them over. Those towns were ordered destroyed and the houses and businesses were picked up from their original locations and moved to Banff.
allan
Why were these towns ordered destroyed (and by what super villain exactly?)? Turns out mining was allowed in (what is now) Banff *after* it was made a national park in 1885 and before the 1930 National Park Act.
Mines were opened, mining towns built, and all was good until the 1920s or so when people got a little ehh on mining in the park. So once a mining town fell on hard times the feds stepped in and ordered it destroyed. But the buildings were still good hence being all moved to Banff.
allan
The town of Bankhead, for example, only existed for 20 years before being carted away. It was a full on town with a school, library, and a power plant (they had electricity before Banff and actually most people in Alberta!) but after a strike in the 1920s the mine closed and the Minister responsible for the park ordered the town removed.
allan
I am reading a book on the history of coal mining in Alberta because I am hip and cool and definitely not a boring person with boring interests.
allan
On a certain level coal in Alberta is a cautionary tale. Coal mining of some description was done essentially everywhere in Alberta, and the province is full of those ghost towns. Within a single persons working life towns were founded, populated, and reduced to scattered foundations and dusty paths that used to be main street.
Now we're an oil and gas province and that seems so permanent. But then again so did coal, and the coal is still there under our feet, we just don't mine it any more.
allan
In Edmonton quite literally, there used to be coal mines running under downtown, to the consternation of anyone digging foundations or lrt tunnels today.
For more history of mineral exploitation in Edmonton try ep 34 of Let's Find Out and listen to Edmonton's former historian laureate take me on a journey in which I discover that the real mineral wealth left by retreating glaciers were the friends we found along the way https://letsfindoutpodcast.com/2019/05/29/episode-34-the-dredge-report/
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