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With a commanding view of the magnificent Canadian Rocky Mountains, a close up look at the southern foothills of Alberta reveals a history rich in oil production, mining, ranching, and aboriginal traditions.
Less than an hour's drive south from Canada's oil capital, Calgary, is the birthplace of its oil and gas industry, Turner Valley. Located along Highway 22 (the famous "Cowboy Trail") and paralleling the majestic eastern slope of the Rockies, this picturesque setting gives little indication of the booming oil activity of its past.
Long before the wooden oil derricks, cattle drives, and coal mines, native North Americans roamed this area where bison provided food and materials for sustenance. The first Europeans to contact the natives were French fir traders from the Hudson Bay Company. With them came conflict, disease, and by 1879, the bison herds the natives depended upon were gone from the Alberta plains.
Cattle ranchers and farmers began to move in along with the trans-Canada railroad in 1881; the route would use Kicking-Horse Pass directly west of Calgary to reach the west coast. In the late 1800's, coal deposits were discovered near the future town of Black Diamond and by 1899, mines were shipping out 650 tons of high grade coal by wagon. Calgary became a supply station bringing immigration of miners, farmers, and ranchers to the area and by 1907, the towns of Turner Valley, Black Diamond, and Longview began to take shape.
"Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump"This small cliff is a prime example of the ingenuity of the early aboriginal people and their use of the natural landforms of the area. Native peoples would chase bison over this precipice and subsequently harvest the carcasses in nearby camps. This is the oldest and best preserved buffalo jumps known to exist and was used continuously for almost 6,000 years. Located 160 km south of Calgary, the UNESCO World Heritage Site offers visitors an information center and viewpoint of the ancient slaughter site. |
A local rancher who had worked in the Pennsylvania oil fields, William Herron, noticed gas bubbling along the banks of Sheep Creek in the Turner Valley. Herron had some samples analyzed and found they contained hydrocarbons. He acquired more land in the area and later teamed up with Archibald Dingman from the Calgary Petroleum Products Company. They struck wet gas on May 14, 1914 while drilling the Dingman No. 1 well. This would be the first of three oil booms for the area. This one lasted only until August, 1914, when World War 1 started.
The second oil boom was initiated in 1924 when the Royalite #4 well blew in producing 21 million cubic feet of wet gas and over 660 bbls of white naptha per day. The Royalite #4 could not be controlled for weeks. There were no pipelines for the gas making the oil the valuable commodity, while the gas was allowed to blow free with flares. Even after the pipelines were built to Calgary, most of the gas was burned off in a giant coulee called "Hell's Half Acre". During the Great Depression, people looking for work from all over Canada and the U.S. would camp on the banks at night to warm themselves by the flare. It could be seen from as far away as Calgary.
Oil from these early wells was so clear with very low sulphur content that it could be used in automobiles straight from the wells. Turner Valley became the largest oilfield in Canada and the major supplier of oil and gas in the British Empire for 30 years.
Robert Brown, an electrical engineer from Quebec, believed crude oil lay deep below the gas wells at Turner Valley. Brown formed the Turner Valley Royalties Company and, in 1936, the Turner Valley Royalties No. 1 struck oil and started a new era at the field and a third oil boom for the area. By 1939, the field had 70 oil wells producing over 10 million barrels of oil to assist in the World War II war effort.
The shanty boom towns and wooden derricks in the valley are gone. In their place are the clean, self-sufficient towns of Turner Valley, its sister city Black Diamond, and Longview to the south. Oil continues to be produced from the field with Talisman Energy the major player in the area.
Against the beautiful back drop of the Canadian Rocky Mountains, tourism and ranching are now very important to these towns along the "Cowboy Trail". With their close proximity to the Rocky Mountain Forest Reserve to the west along Highway 40, the area holds a fascination for almost every outdoor enthusiast. Excursions will take you through the awesome towering mountains (also known as Kananaskis Country) where hiking, fishing, backcountry skiing, and biking are almost limitless.
At 0410 hours on April 29, 1903, without warning, a landslide that lasted just 100 seconds roared off Turtle Mountain and 15 m up the opposite slope. It would be known as the Frank Slide for it narrowly missed the town of Frank, Alberta, killing at least 76 people. The slide buried the coal mining shafts where most of the town's people worked, along with many residents while they slept. It is still one of the most deadly natural disasters in Canadian history.
Turtle Mountain, with a massive limestone overhang at the summit, was notoriously unstable. The local Indians called it the ‘mountain that walked' and avoided the area all together.
Before the Turner Valley oil booms south of Calgary, 100 km further south, yet another energy boom was taking place. Coal mining near the town of Frank had turned the area into the "Pittsburg of Canada" and was in full swing.
Mining below Turtle Mountain just east of Frank, began in 1901 and over the next two years, huge rooms (called stopes) separated by gigantic 12 m-long pillars were sunk deep beneath the mountain. By April, 1903 the stopes had burrowed over 700 m along the eastern vein of coal. They were ‘self-operating' in that the miners just shoveled the coal as it fell from the ceiling.
Twenty miners went underground that fateful night. The entire east face of Turtle Mountain collapsed as a wedge of limestone, 650 m high, 150 m thick, and 1 km wide tumbled down and buried the valley below. Of the 20 miners, three died when they went to the surface for their lunch break. It took the others over 13 hours to dig their way up through an untouched coal seam to reach the surface. The slide had spared the main town of Frank but decimated a row of miners' cottages, randomly killing some while sparing others.
A lot has been learned from 100 years of studying this slide. Early reports pointed to the role of coal mining in the overthrust Mesozoic rocks at the base of Turtle Mountain as one of the primary causes of the catastrophe. Subsequent investigations furthered this assessment. However, more recent interpretations are significantly different than earlier works. These researchers found that the slope of the mountain was at or near the limit of equilibrium and while mining-induced deformation may have contributed, it did not cause the slide; it was bound to happen and could happen again. A monitoring system of seismic and tracking equipment to warn residents of an approaching disaster have been called for but never installed.
Updated: 23.04.2009 15:29 by Alf Kvassheim
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