Myths surround Frank Slide tragedy 120 years later
By Lethbridge Herald on April 29, 2023.
Turtle Mountain is seen from downtown Bellevue. The Frank Slide happened 120 years ago today and a memorial service will be held this afternoon at the gravesite on Old Frank Road followed by a program at the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre.
Herald photo by Al BeeberAl Beeber – LETHBRIDGE HERALD – abeeber@lethbridgeherald.com
“Break It To Them Gently,” Canadian rocker Burton Cummings sings. While he isn’t talking about the fables and myths of the Frank Slide, that song title is appropriate.
Decades later, some myths still surround the tragedy which is known around the world. But the truth, sorry to say perhaps, is less dramatic than the tall tales about the slide
The 120th anniversary of the slide will be commemorated today in two events, one at a gravesite along Old Frank Road and the other at the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre.
The first ceremony starts at 1 p.m. followed by a reception at the centre.
Decades after 110 million metric tonnes of rock came crashing down from Turtle Mountain and partially buried Frank, rumours still abound about it.
Many who grew up in southern Alberta heard them – a bank being buried under the rock with gold inside, being among them.
Facility supervisor Joey Ambrosi of the interpretive centre, said in a telephone interview this week that while more than 90 residents did die in the slide, the rock hit east of the main town, destroying a line of houses. The main part of the town wasn’t touched, said Ambrosi.
And the tale of a baby girl, the so-called “Frankie Slide,” being the only survivor who was found on a rock, is total fantasy.
What isn’t fairytale is that 17 men on night shift who were trapped in the Frank mine all survived and so did Charlie the Horse who was discovered alive 31 days after the tragedy deep inside the mine.
But Charlie, who’d survived by chewing wood off timbers and drinking the dripping water that was available, was literally killed by kindness from being overfed by his rescuers, said Ambrosi.
Within 17 days of the slide, the buried section of railway was back in operation and in 1906 a road was built through the slide along the river.
In the 1930s, Ambrosi said a road was built through the middle. In the 1960s, it was widened and is the main route through the Pass.
The slide area hasn’t changed much since that fateful day 120 years ago, said Ambrosi.
“It was limestone rock so when it broke down, it’s very poor soil so not very much grows there. So it doesn’t really look a whole lot different than it did 120 years ago,” he said.
The slide was the first of several disasters that came to define the area and the resilience of Pass residents. Others included the Bellevue mine explosion in 1910 that killed 31 men and the Hillcrest Mine Disaster in which 189 people died in 1914.
“This is a land of disasters but also resilience. People kept going, the towns kept going. The Frank mine reopened within a few months and they mined in there for another almost 16 years,” Ambrosi said.
Economically, people couldn’t just afford to leave so when the Frank mine reopened, people went back to work. Ditto with Hillcrest where miners who were inside during the explosion that killed so many of their colleagues and friends, headed back to earn a living after that mine resumed operations.
“They had no option.”
The Frank Slide Interpretive Centre is the top tourism attraction in the Crowsnest Pass with many visitors from outside the area coming to learn about the tragedy.
“The Frank Slide really is a core piece of the Crowsnest Pass in terms of its culture and its heritage, I think,” Ambrosi added.
The gravesite where the memorial is being staged doesn’t actually contain bodies, said Ambrosi.
The home of two survivors – Delbert and Gladys Ennis – was hit but the entire family survived. They carried on their lives with Delbert living in the Pass and Gladys in Washington State until they died. Both wanted their remains buried in the slide, said Ambrosi so there are two little pillow markers with their names on it, Ambrosi said.
The slide destroyed the railway, he recalled. There were few cars in the area so the railway – with its importance for the transportation of people and goods – had to be put back in service quickly, he said.
A cart path was soon created around the north end of the slide and the Old Frank Road was built two years later. In the 1920s, the road was widened and the remains of a house was discovered with skeletons inside. That house was close to the site of today’s memorial.
Old Frank Road is popular with people who want to take a look at the slide and Turtle Mountain itself.
None of the buildings in downtown were touched at all.
Ambrosi said he imagines lots of people in the Pass still think the main part of Frank was buried.
“There were about 600 people living in town. When the slide came down, it hit the very edge of town, this one row of houses. Outside of that, there was a shoe shop, there was a livery stable, the mine buildings and there was a construction camp. Probably about 30 men over there, 15-30. And that was hit. They were buried but the row of houses was destroyed, but not completely. It was right at the edge so it wasn’t buried,” he said.
Victims included several members of the Leitch family – the mother, father and four sons. But three daughters survived. Residents of the Ennis house, including a baby, all survived.
He said poor newspaper reporting and stories being spread from one person to another resulted in mistruths being told about the disaster.
“And finally the story came out that the whole mountain fell down, the whole town was buried, the only survivor was one baby girl found out on the rocks,” Ambrosi said. Because nobody knew about her, the baby was named “Frankie Slide” and books, songs, poems and plays written about it.
“But it’s not true. In the town of the 600 people living in the valley, 500 in the town were not touched,” he said.
“The main downtown was not touched, all the residential area, the school, the hospital, nothing was touched really in the town,” Ambrosi said.
Scientists thought more of the mountain could come down so an order was made to have all the buildings moved.
“So over the next five years or so, the town of Frank literally disappeared” with one of the buildings – the miners’ hotel – being dismantled board by board and put on a train. It was hauled to Vulcan where it was re-assembled as the Imperial Hotel, Ambrosi said.
“Basically the town of Frank disappeared so for the next 70 or 80 years people came by on the train or on the road and there was a big slide and there was no town of Frank, so everybody just assumed that it was under there in addition to the bad newspaper reporting,” Ambrosi added.
He said every two or three years, somebody wants to go look for the bank that’s supposedly buried full of gold. So he has to tell them miners were paid in paper money and the bank wasn’t buried – it was actually on main street and since the slide is a protected site, they can be arrested for digging around.
When the slide hit, miners discovered the exit was blocked.
They checked the air shafts that would normally have gone to the surface and learned they couldn’t escape from them. So Ambrosi said one miner had the idea to dig through the coal and they spent 13 hours digging a hole wide enough for one to escape.
Finally about 5 p.m. they started getting out – by then the townspeople had assumed all the miners were dead – “but these guys start popping out of a hole about 50 yards above where they were digging where they thought the entrance was like gophers coming out of the ground. And they were all alive,” Ambrosi said.
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Excellent article Al….nice to read something informative and not divisive for a change.
Good work my man…..
great presentation, Al. enjoyed the read! the slightly slower ride through the area is a welcome moment to take note, and to lend respect to the the effects of the disaster as well as to the natural beauty of the land.