Alberta Ghost Towns

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by Barnes

I moved to Calgary from Montreal in 1996 when I was 16. For as long as I can remember we used to spend either Christmas or New Years at a ski resort close to Mt Tremblant called Grey Rocks. It was established in 1905 by George Wheeler whose granddaughter Lucille was the first North American to win an Olympic downhill medal in 1956. The Snow Eagle Ski School was one of the best in North America.

Maybe that was the inspiration for Kenny Rogers' You Picked a Fine Time to Leave Me, Lucille.

[guzzy]

Originally Posted by Hevishot

95 Kms is taking you 11 hours? How many beer breaks is that? You used to be able to stage from just behind the Fas Gas towards the frank slide interpretive center and take the gold creek route down to lille. Takes less than an hour. Plane crash ride is pretty well used now and people even hike to it if you are without a qwad or bike.

Like i said in my post, never drove it, but would like to. I just pulled the info from quadcorral.com. I read in a forum about it taking 11 hours round trip. I am sure there were plenty of beer breaks.

[Mr.Coffee]

Maybe not exactly what you're looking for but interestingly enough CBC Radio was discussing the abandoned town of Bradian recently. There's a person trying to sell the town actually which I find kind of amusing.

$995K for 20 houses, 109km north of Whistler. Would be pretty sweet to gather a group of friends, buy it, and then start playing a large game of adult Lord of the Flies.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/britis...sale-1.2743682

[Slava]

Here's a place North of Nelson that's interesting.

http://blogs.calgaryherald.com/2014/...gary-trolleys/

[cKy]

The old Flintstones park in Kelowna is now The Brick if I remember correctly. Across the street and down a block from Scandia. I wouldve loved to get my hands on some Flintstones stuff before they cratered it.

[Regular_John]

Originally Posted by Slava

Here's a place North of Nelson that's interesting.

http://blogs.calgaryherald.com/2014/...gary-trolleys/

Can't believe that guy only posted 2 photos of those treasures. I've burnt through a memory card of shots.

[Jimmy Stang]

Originally Posted by cKy

The old Flintstones park in Kelowna is now The Brick if I remember correctly. Across the street and down a block from Scandia. I wouldve loved to get my hands on some Flintstones stuff before they cratered it.

I think you're right. When we were there this past summer, we did some very casual googling because my wife came her as a kid. There is a pub called "Freddy's" which was apparently named to subtly honour of Fred Flintstone. And that Brick is across the parking lot from it.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by jaydorn

Can't believe that guy only posted 2 photos of those treasures. I've burnt through a memory card of shots.

Well let me ask you a dumb question. What do you do with all those pictures? I hiked the Chilkoot Trail a few years back and took a lot of pictures. There are all kinds of cool artifacts and things to see there. But then what? I have pictures of what amounts to old junk...

[Regular_John]

Originally Posted by Slava

Well let me ask you a dumb question. What do you do with all those pictures? I hiked the Chilkoot Trail a few years back and took a lot of pictures. There are all kinds of cool artifacts and things to see there. But then what? I have pictures of what amounts to old junk...

I share mine in an overly annoying fashion on social media/flickr. But that's just me.

However, I also don't work for the Herald and I'm not writing a story about such a cool find. Just seems like if you come across something cool enough (and it is cool) to write a story about, you can/should include more than two photos.

Heck do a slideshow of 15 images spread across 15 pages, rack up the page views and ad exposures.... hmm no wonder print media is dying.

Wait were we disagreeing on something? Now all I can focus on is how inept media has become.

[Violator]

Originally Posted by guzzy

Like i said in my post, never drove it, but would like to. I just pulled the info from quadcorral.com. I read in a forum about it taking 11 hours round trip. I am sure there were plenty of beer breaks.

Did it in the summer it was a 15min drive from the franklside interpretive center then about a 30-45 minute hike.

[Redliner]

I used to be big into the whole urbex thing but just haven't had much time for it in the past few years. It seems I'm not alone - most of the online resources have dried up recently but there is still some information out there. It's not so much ghost towns as just abandoned places in general, but man there is some fantastic stuff out there. Check out www.uea.ca.

There is also a database of abandoned places at www.uer.ca. The site is kind of hard to navigate and much of the information can only be viewed by members as the *ahem* "illegal" nature of some urban exploring makes people understandably wary of who they share their finds with, but still worth a look. Lots of cool stuff right here in southern Alberta or an easy drive away in southeastern BC.

[Magnum PEI]

Not a ghost town, but I've always wanted to go to the Majorville Medicine Wheel.

[shane_c]

Brant is a little south of Calgary. I went to see it when I lived out that way. There were a few things around like an old barn with a car in it, an old truck with a shot out window and a few other things. I got quite a few good pictures while there.

http://www.ghosttowns.com/canada/alberta/brant.htm

[JiriHrdina]

Originally Posted by shane_c

Brant is a little south of Calgary. I went to see it when I lived out that way. There were a few things around like an old barn with a car in it, an old truck with a shot out window and a few other things. I got quite a few good pictures while there.

http://www.ghosttowns.com/canada/alberta/brant.htm

I had Brant on my list of possibilities for my next outing. Thanks.

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by Slava

Here's a place North of Nelson that's interesting.

http://blogs.calgaryherald.com/2014/...gary-trolleys/

I was going to post about Sandon. It's a pretty cool spot. I think the longest running hydro plant in Canada too? It's still going today.

They covered up the river to make their main street, and had something like 50 brothels for 5000 people.

[JiriHrdina]

I thought I would bump this thread and update folks (who are interested) on my explorations this summer. It has turned into quite a little hobby for me. I'm also using it as a chance to improve (hopefully) my photography skills after purchasing a way better camera.

I've taken about 10 trips in total this summer - sometimes using the available resources to pick a destination, other times just hitting back roads looking for something old and cool.

One of my favorite finds was coming back from a Ghost Town NE of Drumheller. (I'll post about that a different time). I was driving South from Three Hills and had been on the road for most of the day - so at this point I was planning on not stopping.

As I went down a valley, I spotted what seemed to be an abandoned farm site off the highway. However, as mentioned, it had been a long day of driving already so I chose to keep going.

As I continued to drive though, I couldn't get that farm site out of my head, so after about going 10 minutes further, I burned a U and headed back. Glad I did.

This site was exactly what I was looking for
- Several structures
- No fences or Trespassing signs (generally I don't trespass - both because it is dangerous and because I want to respect the privacy of others)
- I was able to enter the site and easily turn my car around to face the highway. This is part of the way I try to do this in as safe a way as possible - making sure I can easily get away from a site quickly if I need to

It is difficult to figure out sometimes how old buildings are, or how long they have been empty - but these seemed pretty old. The site had several buildings - mostly barns - plus the farmhouse itself.

I'll post some photos. I'm relatively new to posting images on CP so hopefully I'm doing this right.

This is a shot of one of the main barns:

Spoiler!

[JiriHrdina]

More shots

This is one shot of the main farm house. This was so over-run with trees I couldn't get close to it at all.

Spoiler!

This is another angle of that same house that shows how nature had completely taken it back:

Spoiler!

Several more of the structures

Spoiler!

Looking into the main barn

Spoiler!

And then inside. This was the only structure that I felt safe to enter - even then - the constant creeking and movement of the barn above me made me a bit nervous, even though I know this thing has been standing in the wind for a long time. But at some point these structures fall and you don't want to be inside of them when they do. I worry less about barns though because they don't have basements. Homes are more worrisome because you worry about going through the floors.

Spoiler!

Another one from inside

Spoiler!

[Delthefunky]

I found this really interesting one night a few years ago, and this page reminded me about it if anyone is interested.

http://historicalnewspapers.library....on/cariboosent

It's a collection of an old newspaper that ran in Barkerville from 1865 - 1875. Barkerville was a real happening town, had almost 5000 people during its peak, and was a real frontier for the gold rush. Anyways, some of the articles in it are really interesting to dig in to, and you get a really good feel for the daily life of the pioneers who settled in and around the area.

[FurnaceFace]

Close to home in Canmore there are parts of the coal mining operation still around. This tour put on by Jerry Stephenson and the Museum is awesome for guys like us. Jerry alone is a fascinating man and well worth making the effort to go see him talk and worth the price of the tour. He's been a miner all his life starting out in the slit mines of Scotland where they had to mine coal in extremely cramped conditions. He was the mine manager in India where he had run ins with a tiger and was mine manager for the operation in Canmore. Tons of interesting stories for history buffs like us. The amount of real ghost town buildings is small but there are a couple in Canmore.

http://cmags.org/?p=2982