This Grand Hotel-Turned-Hospital Was Closed in 1922 and Torn Down in 1928

This grand hotel-turned-hospital was closed in 1922 and torn down in 1928.

It was replaced by the Turtle Mountain Playground in 1941, a motel, restaurant, dancehall and swimming pool that was popular with residents and visitors until it closed in the 1980s and was demolished in 1991. The owners also held one of Canada's earliest Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises (circa 1958) and developed a simpler recipe for chicken gravy in its kitchen which, after the personal approval of the Colonel himself, was adopted across the chain.

(Follow the riverside path downstream back to the bridge, and follow the sidewalk back to the Art Gallery.)

This pamphlet was produced by the Crowsnest Heritage Initiative

Crowsnest Pass

Doors Open & Heritage Festival

Frank - A Disappearing Town

The original site of Frank, North West Territories (later Alberta), was between Turtle Mountain and the railway tracks, next to the region's first coal mine. Town founder Henry Frank hosted its grand opening in 1901, a big splashy event attended by the Premier and his Public Works minister, and included sports games, a banquet, and tours of the new mine. Frank quickly grew to be the principal town within the Crowsnest Pass, symbolized by its impressive mine works, tipple and powerhouse, as well as five hotels, a dozen businesses, a two-story school, the regional post office and a mansion for the mine general manager. Even the great slide of 1903 could not slow things down; in 1905 construction began in the north subdivision (the present town) and included a zinc smelter, a large resort hotel and dozens of new houses. What great promise for the “Pittsburgh of Canada”...

It's all gone now.

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TheHistorical Walking Tour of Frank starts at the Allied Arts Gallery, on Highway 3 at 148 Street. A tour map is in the centre of this booklet.

This interpretive walk is about 800 metres in length along concrete sidewalks, with a further one kilometre option along sidewalks and a flat trail. Both are suitable for personswith mobility limitations. Please respect private property while on this walking tour.

structure served as the roof over Frank's skating rink, before being demolished around 1920.

From the sidewalk, look carefully in the trees and brush for remains of the brick foundation on either side of the gas pipeline

right-of-way. A partially-unroofed brick flue (best viewed from outside the Goat Mountain Get-a-way gate) runs up the hillside behind, which led to the base of its former 34m high steel chimney. The smelter office building dates from 1905 and is one of the oldest surviving structures in Frank. It was extensively renovated in 1993 and now serves as the office and residence for Goat Mountain Get-a-way.

(Continue about 400 metres along the sidewalk across the highway bridge to the large graveled parking lot. Cross the parking lot to the river.)

12. Rocky Mountain Sanatorium (former site - present parking lot)

Around 1880 Samuel Lee, a rancher from east of the Crowsnest Pass, 'discovered' a cold sulphur spring at the base of Turtle Mountain. Lee erected a log guest house for those using the springs for their supposed curative powers, the first tourist facility in the Crowsnest Pass. In 1905, the springs property was purchased by the Canadian-American Coal and Coke Company. A two storey hotel at the springs was replaced in 1910 by aluxurious three storey hotel built here on the river, named the Rocky Mountain Sanatorium. The springs water was piped to the hotel basement where it was heated in tubs for guests. In 1917 the Canadian government purchased the hotel and used it as a convalescence hospital for soldiers returned from the battlefields of World War One. An unintended sideline for their convalescence was the nearby ‘red-light’ district, across the river on a low hill to the northwest (towards Blairmore). Veterans from the hospital dubbed this location “Hill 60” after a World War One landmark in the Ypres Salient in France.

10. Frank Hotel(former site - present Pure Country Saloon)

The Frank Hotel was built in 1902 on the main street of the old Frank townsite, and was one of five hotels built in Frank before 1911. It was moved to this location in 1916 where it primarily housed CPR crews. With the end of Prohibition (a provincial ban on alcohol) in 1924, a bar, restaurant and dancehall were added. The Frank Hotel operated until 1957 when it was gutted by fire and torn down.

(continue on the sidewalk for 60 metres, back to the Art Gallery and the end of the Walking Tour. If you wish to continue on a further optional 1km loop, then follow the highway sidewalk for another 130m.)

11. Zinc Smelter(foundation)andSmelter Office(present Goat Mountain Get-a-way office)

Built in 1905, Canada’s first zinc smelter was planned to be North America’s largest. The Canadian Metal Company hoped to take advantage of local coking coal, and rail in concentrated zinc ore from southeast British Columbia. But the company experienced financial difficulties, and the smelter never went into commercial production. For many years the empty

1. Frank Hall (present Art Gallery)

Probably built in 1915 as a wine and spirits store for the Fernie Mountain Supply Company, this brick building is one of the few surviving old commercial structures in Frank. It served as the Frank school between 1921 and 1957, then as the village office and hall for the shrinking community. Today the Crowsnest Pass Allied Arts Association operates a year-round gallery.

2. Blais/Ruzicka Store (present Frank Slide Liquor)

This building was constructed in 1914 as a replacement for A.E.Blais’ general store in the old Frank townsite. Blais operated ituntil 1929 when it was purchased by F.A.Ruzicka. The store closed in 1955 and the building was used sporadically until extensively restored under the Alberta Main Street Program in the 1980s and reopened as Frank Slide Liquor. Its architecture is typical of the small and medium-sized businesses that sprang up throughout the Pass during the boom years.

3. Firehall (former site – present vacant lot)

After the original firehall in the old townsite was damaged in a windstorm in 1917, a new firehall was built behind the Frank Hall (site #1). Ironically, it was burned down in 1936 by an arsonist, who had also set alight other buildings in Frank that year. Fire equipment was then stored in the basement of the Methodist Church building (site #4), until the purchase of a new fire truck in the late 1940s required the construction of a garage on 21 Avenue. Frank ceased to have its own fire department after the creation of the Municipality of Crowsnest Pass in 1979.

(Walk 100m up 148th Street to the corner with 21st Avenue.)

4. Methodist Church (present Masonic Hall)

Built in 1916 at a cost of $3000, the Methodist Church had space downstairs for classrooms and a gymnasium, and it served as Frank's school from 1917 to 1921 and later as a community hall for Frank's predominantly Czechoslovakian population. Its

basement was used to store the town’s firefighting equipment from 1936 to about 1948, after which the bell was removed and displayed behind the Dunlop Guns (site #9) for several years. In 1970 the Masonic Lodge, which had relocated away from the oldFrank townsite after the Slide, purchased the building and reestablished its presence here, which continues today.

(Walk 300m along 21st Avenue to the intersection with 150th Street)

Typical of Crowsnest Pass towns, this street displays a variety of house styles built and renovated through the years.

5. Zinc Smelter residence (14874 - 21 Avenue)

The two-storey gambrel-roofed (barn-style) house on your right was built in 1905 or 1906, probably for manager J.C.C. Fernau.

6. Hospital(former site – present 14913 - 21 Avenue)

Dr. George Malcolmson came to Frank in 1901, and in 1902 built one of Alberta’s first rural hospitals here behind his house. An x-ray machine installed in 1906 or 1907 was possibly the first in Alberta. The house was removed in 1917; the fate of the hospital is unknown.

7. The Frank Villa (former site - present 14937-21 Avenue)

Samuel Gebo (1862–1940) opened the lucrative Frank Mine in 1901 with his fellow American partner Henry Frank, and was the mine company’s vice president and general manager as

The town of Frank survived the Slide of 1903, and expansion north of the railway (the present community) began in 1905. But fears of a second slide resulted in a government closure order for the southern portion in 1910. It took many years for the buildings to be relocated or torn down, and the closure of the Frank Mine in 1917 marked the end of the old townsite. The only significant remaining structures belonged to the CPR, but each succumbed to fire - the roundhouse in 1934, and the station in 1954.

Thepresent-day industrial park follows the original street grid. 152nd Street is the old Dominion Avenue, and is part of the Crowsnest Pass Heritage Driving Route. A few basement depressions and an old water standpipe remain.

(follow the Highway 3 sidewalk northwest for 200 metres to the Pure Country Saloon).

Houses along the highway include some with hipped roofs (four-sided pyramid shape), typical of miners’ cottages built throughout the Crowsnest Pass prior to 1914.
8. Vysohlid residence (2001-150 Street).

The three houses on this corner were built in 1905-06 and are amongst the oldest surviving houses in Frank. They were owned by Henry Frank from 1906 until his death in 1908.

In June 1928 ten-month-old Walter Vysohlid drowned in an unattended wash tub in the back porch of the house closest to the playground. Despite being pronounced dead by the local doctor, baby Walter was attended to by a passing ice cream vendor and returned to consciousness seven hours later. Walter Vysohlid went on to become a CPR train engineer and died in 1999 at the age of 71.

(Walk 40 metres down 150th Street to the highway, turn right and follow the sidewalk for 50 metres.)

9. Dunlop Guns

Scottish immigrants Daniel and Annie Dunlop lost all three sons overseas during World War One. This 1916 German field howitzer and machine guns were erected in 1920 on the Dunlop property in honor of their sons and other Frank veterans who did not return. They were moved about 125 metres to their present location after the sale of the Dunlop property.

9a. Old Frank Townsite (former site - present industrial park).

The industrial park across the railway tracks is the site of the original 1901 Frank townsite. In addition to the mine, the Canadian American Coal and Coke Companybuilt rows of 'miners cottages' and bunkhouses to accommodate its workers, while private interests constructed businesses and hotels onthe main street, Dominion Avenue. The first church in the Pass, Knox Presbyterian, was built in 1901, followed by a two story school (sized for a town population of two thousand) in 1902. Frank's first train station was a converted boxcar, which in 1905 was replaced by a two-story station in classic CPR architecture.
well as town overseer. Gebo lived in an impressive house built on this site in 1901 for the princely sum of $15,000. After Gebo moved to Montana in 1904, the house continued to be used as the general manager's residence until the closure of the Frank Mine in 1917. This fine house, locally known as the Frank Villa, was then left vacant, and was torn down around 1930.

7a. Catholic Church (former site)

The forces of morality faced an uphill battle in boom-town Frank, a rough-and-tumble place with more than its share of murders and violence. On the hillside overlooking Frank, about a hundred metres behind the Frank Villa (site #7), Father Felix Lajat built the Sacred Heart/Corpus Christi Catholic Church in 1910. Furnished with religious items brought from France, the church had unfortunately been built broadside to the valley's prevailing winds and blew down during a storm in 1918.

As the town of Frank was in decline the church was not rebuilt, but its lumber and the church's ornate bell (cast in Belgium) were incorporated into the new St. Anne's Catholic Church in Blairmore. The bell is currently on display outside the Holy Trinity Catholic Church in Blairmore.

(Walk 50 metres south on 150th Street, just past the playground.)

The Historical Walking Tour starts at the Allied Arts Gallery at the corner ofHighway 3 (20th Avenue) and 148thstreet. Walk up 148thStreet to 21stAvenue, turn right and follow 21stAvenue to its intersection with 150thStreet. Turn right and follow 150thStreet down to Highway 3 (20th Avenue), then turn right and follow the sidewalk back to the Art Gallery. For the optional loop (sites 11 and 12), take the sidewalk from the Art Gallery along Highway 3 across the river to a gravelled parking lot (there is a picnic shelter about 50 metres further), down to the riverside path, and then back to the bridge and the art gallery.