MARY'S GENEALOGY TREASURES
The years of 1908 and 1909 were very active years for
When they started digging they had to find some place to
By the time I can first remember the Coalhurst mine and the
The cars hauling the rock could be seen from a long way
It was always on fire. It may have slowed down a bit during
The two rock cars ran on a pair of rails under the tipple
So far we have only mentioned the dump as a huge pile of
There were many humorous things about picking coal too.
At one time one of the citizens bought out the sole rights
Coal as Natural Gas never got into Coalhurst until 1955 and
There was a company man who took care of the track on
After the mine closed, the pulley and the rails disappeared
About seventy five acres of the quarter section that
At the time of this writing (April '84) there is still about
the area on the west side of the Belly River, now known
as the Oldman River. In spite of a flood of the river
slowing the progress of the building of the railway bridge,
work on the railway near Kipp continued. Another ant-hill
of activity was in the making. A bunch of mining engineers
and experienced miners were busy picking out a good spot
to dig a shaft to get at the coal seam, that should be under
the ground there. Somehow, they knew where to start and
had a rough idea that it would be deep. These men were
not novices at this - they had been brought out from the
coal mines in England where mining was a large part of
the economy.
dump the refuse from the shafts so they used a low spot
on the easterly part of the section. They must have used
this for some time after coal production started because
there was a large area covered with waste rock and shale.
Some of it is still there along the road east of the village.
This old dump was a good supply of red shale for driveways,
barn floors, and road building for many years. Even the Dept.
Of Public Works often put mechanical loaders in there in
the spring to reinforce the bad spots in the highways. Many
of the local farmers hauled this red shale onto their driveways
in the early spring. It was easier to haul than gravel and didn't
bother the horses feet. it was free for the taking and didn't
have to be hauled up a coulee like the gravel. Sometimes
the Government loader would fill their wagons if there were
no trucks waiting. This old dump was deposited there long
before most of us can remember and was likely done mostly
by horsepower and rails.
"dump", as everyone called the slag disposal pile, I would be
about five years old, about 1921. By this time, the steam blast
from the hoist exhaust could be seen and heard quite clearly
from our farm two and a half miles south. The large cable
pulleys on the top of the tipple looked like bicycle wheels
and the dump stood out to the east like a large black
strawstack.
off, especially when they dumped a dusty load down the
side of the dump. They used a special kind of car with
a heavier carriage than a mine car and it could dump on
either side so that it was no problem to build up the track
and continue it farther out. By about 1927 or 28 the dump
was really becoming a landmark. It was about the same
height as the big tipple, at least a hundred feet or more,
and stretched out far to the east, two or three hundred yards.
It stood out like a big nose on the face of the flat earth.
heavy rains, but burned all the brighter in dry windy weather.
Sometimes, the lines of burning coal and bone formed
strange patterns in the night, and could be seen for miles.
Other times it just flared up and caused people to be
concerned and worried that someone's house was on fire,
and then there were times when the mine was idle for lack
of orders and the dump just smoldered and stunk to high
heaven. But the heat was always there and once in a while
it would burst into flame for no reason at all and look like a
small volcano. No matter how big of a snow storm we got
the upper part of the dump was black and stood out even
more on the white landscape.
where they were filled from a chute and were pulled out
onto the dump by a cable wrapping onto a power driven
drum, likely by steam up to 1928 or 29. The cable went
under the cars all the way to the top end of the track,
around a pulley about three feet or more in diameter, and
back down to the rock cars. Sometimes when the wind
was blowing, and it really did blow up there, they would
only dump one car so that the loaded one would help pull
the cable back down to the chute again. By about 1939
the end of the dump had reached so far out to the east
that the company decided to swing the end over the north
and go higher to dispose of more slag. From then on all
the waste was dumped on the north side. In spite of the fact
that the pulley at the end of the track was much higher than
before the dump kept expanding until it was within about
one hundred feet of the houses at the east end of main street.
"waste. " There was some inflammable rock but most
of it was not. Before the coal was loaded onto, or
rather into, the railway cars it passed over a conveyor
where men picked out any bone or low grade coal,
sometimes large chunks of coal with a small streak of
bone. All this went into the rock shale and up onto
the dump. On a big day, when thirty or forty cars of
coal were shipped out, there was lots of bone and coal
that went out in the rock cars. This fuel was not all
burned on the dump. The side of the dump where the
waste was being dumped was crowded with miners wives
and sons, farmers, old men, and unemployed young men
gathering up all the nuggets of coal they could find and
putting it in sturdy sacks to carry it down to their wagons,
wheel barrow or pile. The younger ones went the
farthest up the dump where the picking was the best.
Some rolled the pieces down to their partners at the bottom
and caught hell from other pickers who might get hit.
Most of the population in the "company houses" near
the dump seldom had to buy coal. Anytime that the school
was closed and the mine was working most of the boys
would go to the dump and pick coal. Some put it in a pile,
then sold it to some farmer who had hauled grain to the
elevator and wanted to take home some coal. It was a good
deal both ways.
Some days we would leave home early so as to catch
the waste that was dumped from the previous days
production or the night shift. Early in the moming one
could find a good place to park a team and wagon near
the base and there weren't too many pickers either. Once
in a while we would climb up to the top and catch about
two dumps and then there were no more, so we'd just sit
on top of the dump in the sunshine and shoot the breeze.
From up there we could see everything that went on in the
eastern half of the village. All the dear mamas were packing
off their pride and joy to school, and a few minutes later
they were packing the shiny white "Jerry" up the yard to
the little brown shack or running up the alley with a bucket
to get some water from one of the village taps. People in
Wigan were almost half a mile from these taps and we
watched as they hauled their water in any kind of wheeled
barrel they could build. Some had car wheels but most
had buggy wheels, plow wheels or anything they could
steal or get cheap, but this was their only water supply
most of the year. Some even hauled water for their little
gardens from the ditch.
to the dump from the coal company and charged people
for the right to pick coal. If a farmer got about half a ton
on his wagon he would be charged a small sum comparable
to the amount, but the idea didn't work too well. The
aforementioned citizen did collect a few dollars, a lot of
abuse from miners' wives (I hadn't known that women could
swear better than men), lots of enemies and broken windows.
He put shutters on his windows and hired coal pickers but
I don't think he ever got rich.
was a very important commodity in those days. It was just
as important on the prairies as bread, butter and milk. The
houses of that day were cold compared to ours of today
and it took a lot of heating to keep them warm. Insulation
never made its appearance commercially until during the
Second World War. Also during the 1930s, there was very
little money to buy coal so picking on the dump was an
accepted chore after school and on weekends. There was
some kind of happy relationship about it which made it an
enjoyable task. Everybody enjoyed other people's company.
I was within a hundred dollars of being the richest person
on the dump and if somebody was ten dollars poorer than I,
they were in debt. They wore whatever they could find to
keep warm in winter months. Some had dug out their army
great coats and puttees left over from the First World War
and Mr. Helmer even wore his grey coat that he had worn in
serving the German Army. In the summer the women came
with the kids coaster wagons and old wash boilers to fill with
the meagre pickings at the bottom of the dump. The dust
and dirt was soon all over the perspiring faces, arms,
shoulders, legs and as far down their shirt fronts as they
dared to show - and everybody was happy. Many of us miss
those old days of poverty but we hope that our descendants
will never know what it was all about.
top of the dump. He was a big friendly fellow and he did his
job well. He was known to us scavengers as "Big Mike."
He seemed to spread the loads out so as not to bury good
coal before we got it picked or possibly he dumped it in a
different place to keep from injuring someone, especially
his own little wife, Annie Grechylo. I met Annie again in
the mid seventies and she told me that they had moved to
Drumheller after the mine had closed here, and Mike had
been killed in the coal mine there. There was a row of
steel stakes along the track and each day, after all the
rock was hauled out, Mike carefully lifted the rope or
cable onto these stakes so that the fire wouldn't damage
it. There are not too many of us left who were up there
to hear the cable trickling over the rollers or watching
for the pulley to start. It is all just a memory now like
everything else the mine stood for.
and so did the flames, the smoke and the smell. It was
quiet then and the snow stayed on the sides of the dump
part of the way up. Once in a while a flame burst out
and smoldered for a while but after a few years there
was nothing but the old dump, settled down about twenty
feet or so. It stood there for many years, just as a
landmark and a memorial to the years gone by.
included the dump and the site of all those company
houses was purchased by Mr. Frederick Garrick and
later by Mr. Alex Veres for $300.00. In 1959 Mr. Veres
sold the dump to a Calgary outfit who established a
crusher along the railway north of the Ellison Elevator
where they crushed the shale for drillers mud. They
moved their outfit out to B.C. where there was a natural
supply of material along the Fraser River. Unfortunately
the barge that was moving the outfit down the river
went out of control and the whole crushing outfit was
lost. They sold the dump to Jarvie Sand and Gravel
who later sold out to Lethbridge Concrete Products.
Somehow in the process of the coal, bone and other
refuse burning continually it became a brittle form of
red shale. It is now being used to make those red
cinder blocks that are sold all over Southern Alberta
and South Eastern B.C. Many buildings and fences
around Lethbridge are made from the lovely pink shale
from the dirty old Coalhurst dump. When I lean on my
cinder brick wall to chat with my neighbor I like to
think that I may be holding on to a memory of those
days fifty years ago.
thirty-five acres of shale about fifteen feet deep which
may last another six to eight years. It is not all usable
for blocks, however, some is still being sold for use as
a base in feedlots and driveways. When the last of the
old dump is cleared away we may find some historical
artifacts under the eastern end of the rubble where
Jarvie's crew covered the village's garbage disposal
dump a few years ago.
Return Coalhurst, Alberta