This Alberta highway hides a nearly forgotten historic ghost town

If you’ve ever driven along Highway 3 through the Crownest Pass in southern Alberta, you may have noticed a massive field of boulders sitting in the valley right beneath the Rocky Mountains. It’s easy to pass by without thinking twice, but this is Frank Slide, where a massive rockslide in 1903 buried the town of Frank and left behind the landscape you see today.

A town shaped by mountains and movement

According to the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre, in the early 1900s, Frank was a coal-mining town built at the base of Turtle Mountain in the Crowsnest Pass. It was a growing community surrounded by mountain peaks and considered a pretty busy industrial area for its time.

But there was one problem – the mountain above the town was pretty unstable. Layers of rock had been slowly weakened over time by water, ice, and natural cracks running through the mountain.

In 1903, that instability gave way, and a massive section of Turtle Mountain collapsed, sending millions of tons of limestone into the valley below. The slide lasted just over 100 seconds, but it permanently changed the entire landscape.

Today, the landscape still shows what happened. There’s a wide field of boulders that stretches across the valley, with the remainder of the townsite nearby. Above it all, the mountain still stands, still looking partly bare where all the rock was stripped away.

Plan your visit

If you’re looking to dive a little deeper into the history of the Frank Slide, there’s the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre at the base of Turtle Mountain. It’s a very popular stop for visitors, with plenty of exhibits explaining the mountain’s geology and the story behind the town of Frank.

Outside, you can walk right into the rockslide itself and see the massive boulders up close. I’ve visited here a few times myself, and it’s genuinely wild to see how big the rocks are when you’re standing right beside them.

So next time you’re taking a drive through Crownest Pass, it’s worth pulling over at Frank Slide. There’s so much history tied to it, and it’s one of the rare spots in Alberta where you can physically stand inside a place that completely changed the landscape.

Frank Slide

When: Open year-round, Tuesday to Sunday
Time: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Located off Highway 3, Crowsnest Pass, Alta.
Cost: Interpretive centre: Starting at $11

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