The Mountain That Moves: The Frank Slide Disaster

In April of 1903, Turtle Mountain fell. Long known by indigenous nations to be dangerous, the town of Frank built at its base and mined into its sides nonetheless. In the early morning hours of April 29th, 100 million tons of rock broke free and hurdled down the mountain, killing 70 people and burying much of the town in nearly 100 feet of debris. It was over in less than 90 seconds, but has remained Canada’s deadliest rockslide. For a full list of our sources, visit npadpodcast.com/episodes For the latest NPAD updates, group travel details, merch and more, follow us on npadpodcast.com and our socials: Instagram: @‌nationalparkafterdarkTikTok: @‌nationalparkafterdark Support the show by becoming an Outsider and receive ad free listening, bonus content and more on Patreon or Apple Podcasts. Want to see our faces? Catch full episodes on our YouTube Page! Thank you to this week’s partners!3 Day Blinds: For their buy 1 get 1 50% off deal, head to 3DayBlinds.com/NPADKa’Chava: Go to https://kachava.com and use code NPAD for 15% off your first order. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  It's that magical time of year when Designer Shoe Warehouse becomes your Designer Shoe Wonderland and you become everyone's favorite gifter. Because you know that good things come in shoeboxes. Like cozy slippers, on-trend kicks, boots made for snow stomping, and party shoes that sparkle and shine. Plus, stocking stuffers that bring joy from head to mistletoe. Who doesn't love more joy? Find shoes for you and yours at your Designer Shoe Wonderland. Shop in-store or visit DSW.com. DSW: Let us surprise you.

• 0:31Speaker 01

  Whenever fall comes back around, it always feels like a fresh start. This year, I've been layering in some styles from the new Lululemon Fall Drop, because the weather is shifting and I find I have to be ready for the entire day and not just one part of it. Lululemon's Fall line has some really versatile transitional pieces, so I can just wake up, throw on a matching set, add a jacket or a fleece, and head out, knowing that I'll feel comfortable enough to go wherever the day takes me. Check out the new fall arrivals in-store and online now at lululemon.com.

• 1:02Danielle LaRock?

  Each year, millions of people venture to the Canadian Rockies, home to national parks like Banff and Jasper, and wildlife like the boughs, the famous grizzly that dominates Bow Valley, and gray wolves whose howls echo across Lake Louise. But most of the photos you see of this area are of the mountains themselves. Snow-covered peaks tower above sparkling glacial blue lakes. Walls of rock looming dramatically over the highway are some of the most photographed peaks in all of North America. The Ice Line Parkway, the route that winds about 140 miles through the heart of it all, is often crowned the world's most scenic. And an entire outdoor community, economy, and culture

• 1:43Danielle LaRock?

  has sprung up out of the belief that there's no place you'd rather be than on top of those mountains. Not just the Rockies, but mountains anywhere. Online or outside, you're bombarded by Gore-Tex fashion, trail-running shoes, summit selfies, freeze-dried food, climbing guides, gondola rides, Nalgene Pride, All Trails Review, ultralight gear, and summit beers.

• 2:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  All seemingly poking and prodding and promising that you could be no happier in life than you would be at the top of a mountain. And maybe they're right. When you reach a mountain top, outside noise tends to fade away. You breathe deeper, see further, and although you cannot stay, you carry that feeling of the moment back down the mountain with you. At least that's how it normally works. But back in 1903, for one unlucky town in what is now Alberta, the mountain top came down to them. Welcome to National Park After Dark.

• 2:59Danielle LaRock?

  I'm personally happiest on top of a mountain ever, period, full stop. I'm not. I'll just say that right now. It's pretty, it's up there.

• 3:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's pretty high up there.

• 3:08Danielle LaRock?

  Top five.

• 3:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 3:09Danielle LaRock?

  Hey, everyone. This is National Park After Dark, and this voice right now is Danielle.

• 3:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  And I'm Cassie.

• 3:15Danielle LaRock?

  And we won a Webby.

• 3:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  We did. You guys voted for us and we won. Didn't we win two? We won two Webby's.

• 3:21Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, excuse me. It was two.

• 3:22Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, two Webby's. You guys helped us out hard because you voted for us and we won the People's Choice Webby. But then we also won just the Webby Award in the history podcasting section where the judges picked us to be the winners, which is really exciting.

• 3:38Danielle LaRock?

  So, thank you so very much. It's quite an honor to be

• 3:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  Truly.

• 3:43Danielle LaRock?

  Not only considered, but also chosen two times over. So, it feels good. Feels great.

• 3:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  Five years doing this, and it's cool that we won the history section too, because that is kind of how we've woven into this podcast, is mostly history. I know we dive into the dark history, but it's mostly history.

• 4:04Danielle LaRock?

  We've slowly backed away carefully from the true crime box.

• 4:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yes. We're still in it a little bit, like we got our, we got one.

• 4:13Danielle LaRock?

  We got like a foot in there. So, anyway, thank you. We just wanted to say that up top before we got into, guess what? Another story from times long past, 1903.

• 4:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  Ah, history. Is that the year of our Lord?

• 4:28Danielle LaRock?

  No, I don't know. I just like saying that.

• 4:30Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like, what happened in 1903?

• 4:32Danielle LaRock?

  I'm not sure. I think the Lord had been long gone by then, but I also don't know much about that. But yeah, we are going to be in 1903 and we're going to be in an area that we haven't quite visited, but we were really, really, really close when we went on our group trip to Jasper, Banff and Yoho National Parks. And I had to sneak in the boss in the ice line in the intro because...

• 4:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  The boss. If you don't know who the boss is, Google him right now.

• 5:02Danielle LaRock?

  Oh, I should have worn our shirts.

• 5:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, I had known.

• 5:06Danielle LaRock?

  I know. Sorry. I didn't prep.

• 5:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, we could have matched.

• 5:10Danielle LaRock?

  We couldn't be farther from matching right now. You look like a highlighter, especially with your pants. They're like salmon.

• 5:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  They are salmon. You can't see me because I'm in a blanket.

• 5:20Danielle LaRock?

  So you're in salmon, green and blue. And I'm in, I'm not wearing one other color other than black from head to toe.

• 5:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 5:29Danielle LaRock?

  It's all right. I like us this way. Okay. All right. So yeah, let's get on to the story. Just 40 miles from the Canada-US border and a few hours north from Glacier National Park, Crow Nest Pass crosses the Rocky Mountains. The area has been an important passageway through the mountains for a very long time. Stone tools and artifacts trace human history back to the last Ice Age at least 11,000 years ago. The gentle, low elevation route through the mountains made it a crucial corridor for the Tunaha and Pekani or Blackfoot people. The Tunaha's traditional territory of the mountains and the Pekani's territory of the Great Plains made Crow's Nest Pass a natural place for trade and transportation.

• 6:13Danielle LaRock?

  And in the 1800s, as Canadian settlers and industry started to expand west, it became a route along the Canadian Pacific Railway, the first transcontinental railroad in all of Canada.

• 6:26Danielle LaRock?

  The arrival of industry transformed what would later become Alberta. And one of the settlers that came along with the railway was a man named Samuel Gibbo, a prospector in the mining business. After catching wind of coal in Crowsnest Pass, he bought a claim at the base of Turtle Mountain and set out to attract laborers. He secured some financial banking from a wealthy Montanan named Henry Frank, and together they founded a coal company, started digging, and started to build a town. Soon, it would have all the amenities of a modern frontier town. So think, you know, a classic boom town, churches, schools, hotels, banks, horse stables,

• 7:07Danielle LaRock?

  town hall, just kind of popped up very quickly, seemingly overnight. To attract a large workforce, they built boarding houses for single men and homes for the married workers and all of their families. Samuel Gibbo would become the mine overseer and the postmaster, and Henry Frank, the big time investor, of course, named the town after himself. So the town is named Frank.

• 7:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  Wow, thrilling. I live in Frank.

• 7:37Danielle LaRock?

  Far and wide, the two men promised that Frank was home to the world's richest coal mine, and to get people to move there, they threw an enormous gala to launch the town in 1901. In newspaper ads, they boasted fresh fruit and ice cream shipped all the way from Spokane. They had football and lacrosse matches and more, all for free. And of course, assuming you paid your own way to get there, but once you were there, all the stuff was free. And it worked. Over 900 people from far and wide attended the festivals, and in just a few short years, some 600 people called Frank home. So it's like they threw a huge party to get people to populate the town.

• 8:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like, isn't this cool?

• 8:18Danielle LaRock?

  They're like, look, we have ice cream.

• 8:20Cassandra Yahnian?

  I mean, ice cream is a really good way to get people in. It's been bringing people together for millennia.

• 8:27Danielle LaRock?

  Since the year of our Lord, yeah.

• 8:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  1903. I'll never forget it.

• 8:33Danielle LaRock?

  They even had their own newspaper, although by some accounts, the guy who wrote it didn't know how to spell very well, but he did his best.

• 8:40Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's all that matters.

• 8:43Danielle LaRock?

  Some of the residents worked in the mines, others worked for the railroad, ran different businesses, or ran households while their husbands worked underground. The mine itself dug straight into Turtle Mountain, the peak that rose 3,000 feet over the new boomtown, and in a few short years, the investment seemed to be paying off. Coal was plentiful and easy to access there, running like a wide vein throughout the rock of the mountain. The main tunnel of the mine ran for nearly a mile along the coal seam, which was around 14 feet thick on average. Miners dug upward into the seam, excavating as much as they could by hand with picks and shovels. Every now and again, they left some large pillars behind to support the growing network of tunnels.

• 9:26Danielle LaRock?

  Excavated coal was then loaded into rail cars, pulled to the surface by horses, and sorted in a building called the Tiple, which will be relevant in a little bit. So all of this to say, the mine was prosperous at this time. It was making a ton of money, there was a ton of coal, it was easy to get, and Gibbo and Frank set an ambitious goal of mining 1,000 tons of coal per day, and had big, big dreams of turning Frank into the next Pittsburgh, which was a model of industrial transformation. Like, they were advertising it as, yeah, it's small now, but there's a lot of potential here, and you just wait, it's gonna be the next Pittsburgh. So...

• 10:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  I don't know much about Pittsburgh, but it sounds like a big deal.

• 10:08Danielle LaRock?

  Pittsburgh was a big deal back then, let me tell you. I feel like maybe it still, still is, I don't want anyone to get upset.

• 10:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's a big place. I've just never spent time there, so I don't know anything about it.

• 10:19Danielle LaRock?

  Me neither, actually, other than the airport.

• 10:22Cassandra Yahnian?

  I've driven through, yeah.

• 10:23Danielle LaRock?

  I guess we'll have to go. But as time went on, some of the miners noticed rumblings within Turtle Mountain. You can expect some noises in the mining business, of course, as if the rock around you was settling reluctantly into a new shape. But within Turtle Mountain, the noises were extreme. They were deeper, louder, and longer, with rumbles and groans that the workers had never heard before. Coal was seen slumping outward in recently carved walls, and this was not the first sign that something was off about this mountain. Because before the Town of Frank was established, Pekani and Tunaha tribal members offered a warning to the area's new white settlers, "Do not build your homes here."

• 11:07Danielle LaRock?

  What Canadians called Turtle Mountain, First Nations described as "the mountain that moves." The Indigenous nations had watched rocks fall from the mountain before and passed warnings down to their children through oral tradition to steer clear of this place. And even as First Nations were losing their traditional lands to white settlers, having their ways of life disrupted by railroads, reservations, and extractive industries like mining, they passed their warnings on to these new European settlers as well. "This mountain is not safe. Do not build your homes underneath it." And of course, those warnings were ignored. It's always tough to try to explain geology with just words, or like in any sort of way,

• 11:51Danielle LaRock?

  because I'm a Webby Award receiver in the history category. Not geology. Not geology, but I'll do my best here, but I will include some pictures in the video version and on our socials and stuff, because there are some visual representations that are illustrative to what I'm about to try and say. But essentially, Turtle Mountain was like a house of cards holding up a giant boulder. Millions of years ago, before the Rocky Mountains existed, the ground that became Crow's Nest Pass was made of two main layers. There was heavy limestone on the bottom and a weaker mix of sandstone on top.

• 12:33Danielle LaRock?

  So if we're doing some food references here, let's go with pumpkin pie, because it's pretty apt, okay? Okay. I know you just gave me a side eye, but so- Pumpkin pie mountain. Got it. Got it, okay, we're locked in. So the sturdy flaky crust is the limestone, and then the filling, the pumpkin, is the softer sandstone. Okay. Okay, so we got that. I'm hungry.

• 13:01Danielle LaRock?

  Sorry, I know it is right before dinner that we're doing this. But as tectonic forces pushed the Rocky Mountains together, those layers were forced upward, bending up and up into the shape of a capital A, before eventually the stress became too great. The layers buckled and one half climbed on top of the other. What was once the bottommost layer of limestone crashed over the sandstone like a slow motion wave. And so to go back to our pumpkin pie analogy, you can imagine why this would be precarious. The pie crust, that is now the top of Turtle Mountain, is sitting on top of the weak layer of pie filling. It can hold it, maybe for a little bit, but it's going to be pretty wiggly. So we're reversed here. It's not good.

• 13:46Danielle LaRock?

  Okay, not good. To make matters worse, Ice Age glaciers carved away at both of these layers, making them weaker and steeper. And the Crow's Nest River, which flowed at the base of the mountain, was steadily carving away more and more of its foundation. And then there was the mining operation. The coal seam that miners were digging into and trying to remove, you know, those 1,000 tons every single day, that was being carved into the pie filling that we're talking about, the softer, right? Pulling out the apples. I mean, I'm picturing apple pie, pulling out the pumpkin. This whole time I've been picturing apple pie. Oh my God, the whole analogy is ruined. We gotta start over. Um, no, yeah, they're

• 14:30Danielle LaRock?

  carving these tunnels through that weaker sandstone that's already compromised and not very solid. So they were digging miles and miles of tunnels directly into the soft sandstone and slate, which was holding up that entire mountain at this point. It was the perfect storm of tectonics and time, gravity and greed, and the final straw was water and ice. April of 1903 had been very warm, causing snow melt to trickle down into the cracked limestone at the top of Turtle Mountain. But suddenly... On the night of April 28th.

• 15:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  Wait a second.

• 15:09Danielle LaRock?

  It's April 27th when we're recording this.

• 15:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like I chose this for a reason.

• 15:14Danielle LaRock?

  Wow.

• 15:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  We do this kind of a lot.

• 15:17Danielle LaRock?

  I know. I really didn't do it intentionally, but.

• 15:20Cassandra Yahnian?

  We never do.

• 15:21Danielle LaRock?

  So, the night of April 28th, the temperatures plunged to zero degrees Fahrenheit. And the water that had melted in the days before, still working its way through all the crevices of the rock, now turned to ice, bulging outwards and working to wedge open the tiny cracks in Turtle Mountain. And at 4:10 a.m. on April 29th, the entire east face of Turtle Mountain broke loose. As if out of nowhere, an almighty clap of thunder erupted from above. And the churning, grinding mass of rocks emitted a sound like a freight train, or to some, the sound of steam escaping at a high pressure. Boulders the size of houses reached speeds of over 70 miles an hour,

• 16:05Danielle LaRock?

  launched into the air, clashed together, and rammed into the valley floor with terrible thuds. Some 90 million tons of rock crashed down into Crowsnest Pass. That's nearly the weight of 2,000 titans piled one on top of another.

• 16:22Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's a lot of titans.

• 16:24Danielle LaRock?

  Ahead of the slide was a wall of wind that crashed into the landscape like a shockwave of a bomb. By one legend, people in the town of Cochrane, about 100 miles away, heard this slide, describing it like the sound of a giant gunshot.

• 16:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  We've been to Cochrane.

• 16:40Danielle LaRock?

  Or driven through it.

• 16:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, you drive through it on your way to Banff, and I've been there before because they have a wolf sanctuary there.

• 16:47Danielle LaRock?

  Oh.

• 16:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 16:49Danielle LaRock?

  I didn't know that we've been there.

• 16:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  Well, we ju- you drive through it on the highway, and then you have to get off. You're not like technically in it, but you're like, I mean, you're technically

• 16:59Danielle LaRock?

  I've seen it.

• 17:00Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, you've seen it from afar.

• 17:02Danielle LaRock?

  As rocks hit the valley floor, it dammed the Crowsnest River before surging like water out across the valley. The churning rockfall kicked up an enormous cloud of dust charged with enough static electricity that it generated its own lightning. Eventually, it came to a stop a mile from the mountain's base, blanketing an area almost the size of Central Park, or about 500 football fields. The field of boulders and debris was 45 deep in some places and 100 feet deep in others. And it's truly astonishing, even after seeing pictures, it's hard to wrap your mind around just how devastating this slide was.

• 17:43Danielle LaRock?

  Frank Anderson, the author of a 1968 book about the slide, put it this way. It would conservatively take 100 gravel trucks carrying three tons per load, making 10 trips a day, and estimated 66 years to remove the debris from this slide. Yet the entire thing was over in 90 seconds.

• 18:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  Wow, that's in, that's crazy to even think about. The noise, I mean, no, you mentioned it already that it could be heard so far away, but that happening so fast and that amount of rubble.

• 18:19Danielle LaRock?

  It must have been so loud. Warning, and I know I just kind of described all the warnings that were happening geologically, and of course, the indigenous nations knew that trouble was afoot, it was unstable. But I'm saying in the immediate, you know, it's

• 18:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  When people are asleep in their beds.

• 18:36Danielle LaRock?

  Right, yeah. Of the 600 people who lived in Frank, about 100 of them were believed to be in harm's way, like in the path of this slide. At the time of the slide, most people in Frank were, like we just said, asleep, including a miner named Jim Warrington. Early in the morning, Warrington woke up to what he thought was the sound of roaring hail, but as soon as he had leapt out of bed, the wave of rocks carried him and his house 40 feet away before coming to a stop. Pinned by boulders and debris with a newly broken hip, he shouted for help. And as rescuers dug him out, he felt something soft beneath him. Rescuers kept digging after freeing Warrington and found his neighbor, Mrs. Watkins.

• 19:21Danielle LaRock?

  She incredibly suffered some wounds, but she was miraculously alive and lived.

• 19:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  And how far did she live? Like you said they were neighbors. Do you know how close they were?

• 19:33Danielle LaRock?

  I have no idea how close she had been launched or propelled by this slide, but he had been moved 40 feet in his home.

• 19:42Cassandra Yahnian?

  And then this woman was found underneath him also.

• 19:44Danielle LaRock?

  Underneath him.

• 19:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  And was a neighbor.

• 19:46Danielle LaRock?

  Yes.

• 19:47Cassandra Yahnian?

  From whoever knows how far apart. Wow.

• 19:51Danielle LaRock?

  John McVeigh was a construction manager with the Canadian Pacific Railway who was building a new line out of Frank. Normally McVeigh spent nights with his wife and child in the nearby town of Blairmore. But since they were off visiting family in Calgary that week, he decided he would just stay with his crew in Frank that night. He and his 11 staff asleep at their construction camp were all killed. One of the few people awake at the time was another railroad worker named Sid Choquette. That morning, he was helping load coal onto a freight train headed out of town. And when the mountain broke loose, the train's engineer floored it. Sid clung to the outside of the train as it raced across a wooden bridge,

• 20:33Danielle LaRock?

  making it to the other side within seconds before the bridge exploded into splinters behind them. Immensely relieved to be alive after such a close call for sure. But Sid didn't rest long. He realized that if the bridge was down, so was the telegraph line that could warn oncoming trains about the slide. And this was a big deal because there was another train called the Spokane Flyer. It was a passenger train and it was due to pull into Frank that morning, like at dawn. So just a couple hours after the slide occurred. So Sid ended up running over a mile across the loose, broken rock through all those clouds of dust.

• 21:15Danielle LaRock?

  I mean, this thing you couldn't even see your hand in front of your face, like the amount of dust and debris in the air. All in an effort to stop the train and save the people who were aboard. And once again, he made it just in time. So he saved all of those people.

• 21:34Danielle LaRock?

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• 22:19Danielle LaRock?

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• 23:03Danielle LaRock?

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• 23:47Danielle LaRock?

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• 24:03Danielle LaRock?

  John Thonley owned a shoe repair shop on the eastern flats of town, right by the miners houses. And that week, his sister Ellen had been visiting him from out of town, but was headed back home on an early train the following morning. And as a treat, John actually suggested that they stay in town at the hotel, so they wouldn't have to rush because his shoe repair shop and his home were just like on the outskirts of town. He's like, it'll be a treat, like, we won't have to rush in the morning. You can sleep in a little bit, have an easier going morning. And the decision actually ended up saving their lives because his store was completely obliterated and buried. That's the universe looking out for you.

• 24:45Danielle LaRock?

  It sure is. And this is another one in its own way, even though there's tragedy also. So Lillian Clark was the oldest of six kids, and she had a job at the boarding house in Frank. That day had been really long at work. She had stayed late finishing all of her tasks for the day. And like many frontier boom towns, the main street got pretty rowdy late at night. It was kind of like a lawless type of place. And rather than walk home in the dark, Lillian's boss offered her a room to stay in so she could walk home the next morning in a more safe environment. And Lillian hesitated at this because she had never once in her life stayed away from her family. She had never spent a night outside of her

• 25:29Danielle LaRock?

  home before. And she talked to her mom about it, and her mom did give her permission to stay the night. So she did. Her mom, her six siblings, and her father were all killed in the slide. That's awful. And finally- But she survived. She survived because she was at, she stayed overnight at work. That was unaffected by the slide because it wasn't in the path of the rockslide. And then finally, there's a story that's actually pretty popular when this event is brought up. And it's also pretty exaggerated.

• 26:06Danielle LaRock?

  But it's the story of a baby. So the Leach family owned a respected grocery and furniture store in town, which supported their growing family. The parents, Alexander and Rosemary, their four sons and three daughters comprised this family. And all of them were asleep in their home when the slide happened and it quickly overtook their house. It completely obliterated it. And in the legends that spread afterwards, rescuers who raced to the Leach house found that everyone in the house had died, except by some miracle, the youngest, a one and a half year old girl was found outside of the home, apparently thrown from

• 26:45Danielle LaRock?

  the house, out of a window and into a nearby bale of hay. And she was found crying, but unharmed. And as the legend goes, since knew, but nobody knew her name, because there was no survivors of her family, the townspeople named her Frankie. They're like, this is just...

• 27:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  After the town?

• 27:07Danielle LaRock?

  After the town. Once again, after the town.

• 27:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  Everything is Frank. Even the girls.

• 27:14Danielle LaRock?

  But in reality, there is some truth to this story. The girl was genuinely thrown from the house through some sort of opening, whether it was a window, or if like the walls disintegrated and she was thrown out, probably by the blast of wind that came first. Because remember the, the wind preceded the rock slide?

• 27:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 27:35Danielle LaRock?

  But she was not totally alone. Her two sisters also survived. The iron frame of their bed actually protected them from the full weight of the collapsing debris of their homes. And it kind of, so even though it pinned them, it shielded them from the brunt force of the collapse of the house. And they lived. And of course, they knew her, their sister's name, and it was Marion, not Frankie. So.

• 28:05Cassandra Yahnian?

  They're just really trying to push the Frank thing.

• 28:07Danielle LaRock?

  They are. They're selling Frank hard. It's like, okay, that's our sister. She has a name. She's almost two.

• 28:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  She has a name and you're alive. Also, by the way, also her family.

• 28:17Danielle LaRock?

  Of the 100 people in the slides path, at least 70 of them were killed. But as rescuers poured over the Boulder field, only 20 bodies were ever recovered. Everyone who was found alive in the rubble as rescuers were going through and searching for survivors, they actually all survived their injuries, which is pretty incredible. And I say at least 70 people were killed because the records were pretty shoddy at this time. And a lot of the records of the town were buried and not retrieved.

• 28:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  And it sounds like a lot of people visit this area too.

• 28:54Danielle LaRock?

  A lot of people were visiting and a lot of people were working in the mines and kind of just passing through and staying at boarding houses. So it's just kind of like, there wasn't an official register of every single person who was there at the time. So it's just kind of a best guess. However, as the sun rose on the next day, as the dust was starting to settle, 17 men were still fighting for their lives because they were trapped underground in the mines.

• 29:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  There were people working, were they working in the mines when this?

• 29:28Danielle LaRock?

  Yes.

• 29:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  Whoa.

• 29:31Danielle LaRock?

  When the Frank slide began, 20 miners were working their night shift. And three of them were taking their lunch break up at the surface, sitting around the tipple, that place that I described earlier for processing the coal, the building where it gets all sorted out and stuff. One of these men was named Alfred Clark, whose daughter, Lillian, was spending the night at the boarding house where she worked. So that's how her father died, the one that stayed and her whole family got killed. So her mom and all her siblings were at her home who got, that got obliterated. And her dad was taking his lunch break that was in the drag path of the slide. So all three of these men who were taking their break were killed.

• 30:13Danielle LaRock?

  And one of their bodies was recovered over a quarter of a mile away.

• 30:20Danielle LaRock?

  The seventeen remaining men that were on shift that that night were all underground. And in the mines, even during daytime, of course, you needed handheld safety lights to see anything. Joe Chapman was the shift foreman that night, and he was working about a mile from the mine's entrance when the world began to shake, followed by a blast of air that knocked him completely off his feet. The gusts slammed Chapman and many others right into a wall, blew out their lights, and blew over the horses that they had inside to pull the mine carts. Rocks fell from the ceiling and pinned miner William Warrington in place, but friends were thankfully able to act quickly and dig him out. And they started to formulate a plan.

• 31:04Danielle LaRock?

  Some of them feared it was an explosion because they were unaware that the whole ass mountain just collapsed and obliterated everything. They thought that it was something that happened due to mining activities directly, like maybe the methane gas ignited and there was an explosion, and they just weren't sure. But whatever caused the shaking, they knew they had to get back to the entrance. As the seventeen men ran the long way back, the tunnels heaved and buckled. Coal rained down from above, and when they arrived at the entrance, they discovered it had completely collapsed, creating a wall of rock and shattered wooden support beams. They were entombed.

• 31:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's my nightmare, also because I'm a little claustrophobic, but you're essentially buried alive.

• 31:53Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, yeah, you are. And of course, this is bad. Everyone's like, okay, this is a no shit moment. But the main entrance wasn't the only way to get out. There were other openings that they used as airways, so they began to check them. They checked the air shaft beneath the main entrance, only to find that it was not only blocked, but it was rapidly filling with water. The slide had dammed the Crow's Nest River and nearby Gold Creek, and this wave of water threatened to drown them if it kept rising. So that's your nightmare.

• 32:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  My other nightmare.

• 32:26Danielle LaRock?

  That that one is actually your nightmare.

• 32:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  This is the worst case scenario. It's like you're buried alive and now it's being filled with water.

• 32:35Danielle LaRock?

  Others rushed a mile back into the mines to check the other airways, which were also blocked. Without any airflow, the oxygen in the mines would steadily drop, while deadly levels of coal gas would build. If they didn't get out soon, they would all die. In a panic, some of them tried to dig their way out of the main entrance, but the limestone boulders were much harder than they had anticipated and halted their progress. In a last ditch effort, one of the miners proposed a hail mary. Rather than digging out through the collapsed entrance, what if they dug upwards, straight through the coal seam, and punched their way through the mountain that way? Smart, innovative.

• 33:17Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, depending on how close you are to the top of the mountain, I guess.

• 33:22Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 33:22Cassandra Yahnian?

  Otherwise, it's just like 7,000 feet up.

• 33:28Danielle LaRock?

  Starting at 7:00 AM, the men rotated in teams of two or three at a time and made slow but steady progress, because this coal seam is also, remember, pretty narrow, so not all people can be working at one time. They sang to keep their spirits high until the oxygen started to lower. Okay, maybe we shouldn't sing.

• 33:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  Maybe we're actually taking up all of our oxygen right now. Just leave one designated singer.

• 33:57Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, one's fine. Actually, that's my nightmare. That's my nightmare. I don't want to be sung to. Please don't do that. Especially at a time like this, you know?

• 34:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  It depends. If they're good at singing, I could go for it.

• 34:11Danielle LaRock?

  You gotta keep morale alive somehow, and I guess that's how it was done.

• 34:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  Whistling, though?

• 34:16Danielle LaRock?

  Oh.

• 34:17Cassandra Yahnian?

  I'll be back in the water.

• 34:21Danielle LaRock?

  Space was tight, the work was backbreaking, and there was no guarantee of success as the hours ticked by. By 5:00 PM, they had been trapped for 13 hours and had been mining for 10, most started to slump out of breath and pure exhaustion. Finally, as miner Dan McKenzie swung his pick, it broke through the ceiling. An array of light shone into the mine and they were free. As Dan climbed onto the surface, he witnessed the havoc that the rockslide had wrought, describing it like a giant hand of limestone had covered the entire valley. Just 50 yards downhill, he also spotted a rescue crew attempting to dig into the main mine entrance.

• 35:04Danielle LaRock?

  So they're like, hey, over here, we're good.

• 35:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  Like, we becha, we're out.

• 35:09Danielle LaRock?

  All 17 miners who were trapped underground during Frank's slide escaped alive, a truly remarkable feat celebrated by the traumatized town. William Warrington, with a broken leg, was the only one seriously injured. But as Warrington arrived in town, he learned that his wife and seven children had all been killed.

• 35:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  There's so much devastation with this. It's all big families.

• 35:35Danielle LaRock?

  They're all huge families.

• 35:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  Cause everyone had so many kids back then too. So like everyone, it's like you and your family have seven children. There's nine, 10 of you.

• 35:45Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. And it seems like a very, a very close knit community also. So it's like, even if you weren't affected, somebody you knew or were related to was affected.

• 35:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  Especially if there's only 600 people. That's smaller than the town I grew up in and my town had a thousand people.

• 36:03Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. And at least 70 of them, you know, were killed.

• 36:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  You would definitely know.

• 36:09Danielle LaRock?

  In a 2003 documentary about the Frank slide called On the Edge of Destruction, they shared a heartbreaking quote from Warrington. "My wife worried every time I went underground," he said. "But she's the one who died, gone. My whole family, none of them ever found." Which is just another layer of, and we talk about that all the time, so I won't harp on it, but.

• 36:30Cassandra Yahnian?

  But it is, I remember you said at the beginning of this episode that the rock piles were, what did you say, 40 feet deep, 100 feet deep in other sections? And if you're, it feels like you just had to be lucky and be on top of the rubble or close to it to survive this. And everyone else who was deeper in its path, I mean, with rock that is so heavy and 100 feet deep.

• 36:56Danielle LaRock?

  I understand how they weren't able to recover everybody. Yeah, the recovery efforts were almost nonexistent. It's kind of like you look at it and you understand that there's not much that can be done. Yeah. As the miners dug themselves free, word of the disaster in Crowsnest Pass spread very quickly. The following day, on the front page of the New York Times, an article read, "Mountain Blown Up and Ninety-Five Killed." Disaster visits a mining town in Alberta province. Various theories on the cause of the explosion. Whole top of mountain slides into the valley. Danger of flood from dam formed by the rock. It's a very long title, but I get what they're trying to say. That's like a paragraph.

• 37:41Danielle LaRock?

  Well, the, the title was "Mountain Blown Up and Ninety-Five Killed," and the subheader was those like 12345 sentences. They didn't leave anything to the imagination. It's like you want to know. You don't even have to read the article, you know? And regarding, you know, what happened, kind of going back to the various theories thing, there were various theories. According to one report, most of the people in Frank believed that a volcano was responsible because they had seen fire during the slide. But in hindsight, that was likely due to the static electricity in the dust clouds or sparks from the rocks colliding themselves. I know what my theory is. You don't have a theory because I told you about the pumpkin pie. Yeah. Is that your theory?

• 38:25Danielle LaRock?

  Well, that's my theory. That's what happened. Right. But the Canadian government wanted to get to the bottom of what happened because whatever it was may happen again. They sent in a team of senior geologists to determine what had happened. And they began to document the risk factors that we talked about earlier. The jumbled layers of hard limestone and soft sandstone, the freeze thaw process that pried the, the rocks loose, and a river carving away at the base. While searching for explanations, they also concluded that the mine was at least partially to blame as well. Writing, quote, "It is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion

• 39:06Danielle LaRock?

  that these great chambers, 250 to 400 feet high and 15 feet wide, situated directly under the foot of the mountain, must have weakened it."

• 39:17Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 39:17Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. And other newspapers began to share survival stories like the Toronto Star, planting the seeds of the baby Frankie legend almost right away. That they kind of took shape almost immediately. Soon the town was reopened and began to rebuild because they evacuated for a couple of days. And then, once it was given the all clear, some people decided to return. The Crow's Nest River carved its way back through the debris, averting the risk of flooding that people feared. And although after the geologists made their report, the town was ultimately relocated a few miles away. The slide had created two distinct summits on Turtle Mountain, and there was reason to fear that the southern one was poised to slide again in the future.

• 40:03Danielle LaRock?

  The Canadian Pacific Railroad, who lost at least a dozen employees to the disaster, rebuilt and reopened their line through Frank in just three weeks. They also awarded Sid Choquet with a letter of commendation for running over a mile over the Broken Rock to save their passenger train. And as a little bit of a thank you, they wrote him a check for 25 whole dollars for his bravery, which is close to a thousand bucks today.

• 40:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  Okay.

• 40:30Danielle LaRock?

  That's nice.

• 40:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  That is nice. He was just helping and they gave him something. So that's nice.

• 40:36Danielle LaRock?

  Yep. The owners of the Frank Mine also rushed to reopen, rejecting any of the blame placed at their feet by geologists.

• 40:44Cassandra Yahnian?

  Okay, that is so tone deaf to do that. I understand that's probably their livelihood and stuff, but an entire town, not entire town, but a massive part of the town was just wiped out and so many people died. And to be like, we're back in operation.

• 41:01Danielle LaRock?

  Right. I'm sure with no improvements to structural integrity or safety or anything like that. Like, there's one thing to be, to recognize, hey, this is a business. We need to keep our doors open and production going. But also taking ownership and claiming responsibility and altering.

• 41:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  They lost workers.

• 41:26Danielle LaRock?

  Right.

• 41:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  You know, it's like those men who were in the mountains were your employees and you're just gonna send them that died. And you're just gonna send the survivors back in with no changes and right, right away, but.

• 41:42Danielle LaRock?

  Well, after just a month, they were open for business with a newly reinforced entrance because the original one was totally wiped out. And while that alone, of course, is a little shocking after all this, it's like, okay, I guess. Uh, the biggest surprise at the time was that when they finally got back into the tunnels, one of the three workhorses who had been trapped inside was still alive.

• 42:08Cassandra Yahnian?

  Whoa, after a month?

• 42:09Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, his name was Charlie and he had survived a month in complete darkness by drinking puddles of floodwater, sucking on his harness and gnawing at the wooden beams that held the tunnels open.

• 42:20Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, my God.

• 42:21Danielle LaRock?

  Miners rushed to give him a hearty meal of oats and brandy, but they were just a little bit too late because he collapsed shortly after and died after being found.

• 42:32Cassandra Yahnian?

  No.

• 42:33Danielle LaRock?

  No, Charlie.

• 42:34Cassandra Yahnian?

  No, I thought that was like a light at the end of the tunnel story.

• 42:38Danielle LaRock?

  I almost didn't include it because he died anyway, but I think it's pretty incredible.

• 42:42Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's incredible that a horse survived a whole month.

• 42:47Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, and there's a pic, I'm not gonna post it because he's dead. But there is a picture of a couple of the miners at the entrance that they just unveiled and opened again. And Charlie's there.

• 43:00Cassandra Yahnian?

  Wow.

• 43:01Danielle LaRock?

  Like right before he collapsed, it's or right after he collapsed. Uh, okay, but I don't think this is a surprise. But most of the survivors opted to move away from Frank, even though they relocated the town a couple of miles away from the original site.

• 43:17Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

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• 46:02Danielle LaRock?

  Jim Warrington, who was carried 40 feet from his bed that night with the broken hip, moved to a nearby town called Blairmore. Lillian Clark, the only member of her family to survive because she spent the night at the boarding house, moved to live with her uncle in Washington State. Marion Leach, known as Baby Frankie, moved with her sisters to Cranbrook, British Columbia, and was raised by her aunt and uncle. Henry Frank, the investor who named the town after himself, reportedly never recovered from the shock of the rockslide. Within five years, his mental health had declined so much that he was confined to a private sanatorium in Butte, Montana. Tortured by memories of the disaster and his ill-fated mining venture,

• 46:46Danielle LaRock?

  he died in 1908.

• 46:48Cassandra Yahnian?

  That's super sad.

• 46:49Danielle LaRock?

  So it feels like he had a very, very severe case of survivor's guilt and took a lot of responsibility to heart.

• 46:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 46:58Danielle LaRock?

  And was just shattered by what happened.

• 47:01Cassandra Yahnian?

  I can't even imagine surviving something like that and what, how you would feel afterwards.

• 47:07Danielle LaRock?

  But not everybody moved or even quit mining as a result. One of the miners who survived being trapped underground was named Charles Elick. And he continued to work in mining for the next 10 years in and around this region. However, in a cruel twist of fate, kind of like a Final Destination scenario, Elick died 11 years after Frank's slide in the Hillcrest Mine Explosion, which was Canada's worst mining disaster and a story all of its own. In time, life moved on in Crowsnest Pass. The Frank Mine closed for good in 1918, but shortly after, locals started to look for gold in the rockslide debris,

• 47:50Danielle LaRock?

  because legends, once again, started to take hold. There was this rumor that had spread that the town bank and its safe, rumored to be filled with up to $500,000, had been buried by the slide, which caused generations of young people and treasure hunters and thrill seekers to comb the debris in hopes of finding this buried bank and all of its money.

• 48:19Cassandra Yahnian?

  Interesting.

• 48:20Danielle LaRock?

  Author J. William Kerr, who wrote a book about the slide, was one of those people. As a kid, he remembered going and trying to look for this lost money, only to later find photos of the town that clearly show the old bank still standing after the rockslide.

• 48:41Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, no.

• 48:42Danielle LaRock?

  It's like, did anyone check this?

• 48:44Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's like, this is so easy. There's a photo. It's right there.

• 48:49Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, it was not affected at all.

• 48:51Cassandra Yahnian?

  There's no gold.

• 48:53Danielle LaRock?

  In 1922, a road over Crowsnest Pass was paved over the slide, foreshadowing a growing tourism industry into the Canadian Rockies that would provide new incentives to protect the environment. While grading the road, workers came across the debris of a miner's home, entirely buried within the rubble, with skeletonized remains of its occupants inside. The remains were never identified, but a memorial stands in the home's place with a bronze plaque dedicated to the victims of the Frank Slide disaster. And today, the Frank Slide Interpretive Center looks out over the slide debris and tells the story of the town, the night the mountain fell and the people caught in harm's way.

• 49:36Danielle LaRock?

  You can walk the trails through the debris field or hike up the 3,000 feet in less than three miles to the top of Turtle Mountain. If you want, I, we just talked about how unstable it is, but that's your journey. The truth is, if the mountain were to move again, we would be a lot better prepared to catch it early this time. Thanks to Alberta Geological Survey, Turtle Mountain is one of the most monitored mountains in the entire world. Extensive ground penetrating radar scans map the face of the mountain 35 meters deep, helping scientists to find fractures in the mountain and anticipate where future movements may occur.

• 50:17Danielle LaRock?

  Since 2014, an automated radar system scans and analyzes nine zones on the mountain every eight and a half minutes and is set to alert specialists if a certain threshold of movement has been observed. Technology is pretty cool sometimes. They're like, whoa, we gotta keep our eyes on this one. Yeah. It's about to go. This one moves, as we were told in 1903. And yeah, before, yeah. Hypersensitive GPS stations have been set up on Turtle's south peak to detect motion, able to detect if the rock moves even millimeters in any direction. Crazy, like, I understand. They can do that. Yeah, monitoring it in that way, but I don't want to say it's overkill because

• 51:02Danielle LaRock?

  it's clearly needed, but it's just kind of like, that's a lot of monitoring. So if and when Turtle Mountain slides again, we will definitely see it coming. In retelling the story of Frank Slide, we can honor those who've lost their lives and celebrate the heroism of the survivors. As modern Canadians, Toona Haa and Pekani people have grappled with what we can learn from the story today. Some point to the warning that the miners ignored. This mountain moves. We would all do well to observe the world around us and listen to its warning signs. And while nature is powerful, it is not immune to our meddling. Across the world, landslides, floods, and wildfires have become more frequent and more

• 51:43Danielle LaRock?

  destructive in recent decades, given at least in part by actions within our control: destructive mining operations, greenhouse gas emissions, and shortsighted logging practices.

• 51:55Danielle LaRock?

  Today, trees have started to poke through part of the Boulder field beneath Turtle Mountain. The Crow's Nest River carved its way back through the debris. And for all of the harm that the Frank slide caused, as Frank Anderson, the author of the book about the slide says, "The slide is a gigantic tombstone and probably the most awe inspiring in the world." So if you'd like to visit for yourself, the interpretive center, which opened on April 28th, 1985, is at the base of the mountain, less than two hours north of Glacier National Park and Waterton Lakes National Park. And I was looking at the center's website, of course, during research and stuff and just kind of browsing

• 52:36Danielle LaRock?

  the offerings that they have because they have, I mean, it is right on top of the slide. It's actually pretty cool.

• 52:45Cassandra Yahnian?

  The center is on top of the slide.

• 52:47Danielle LaRock?

  It's like right near it and the trails are all on top of the Boulder field. I mean, if you're hiking, you're hiking through the actual Boulder field on top of the town of Frank.

• 52:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  So that's morbid.

• 52:59Danielle LaRock?

  It's morbid for sure, but they have a ton of different programs and stuff, but I wanted to shout one out that I think is really cool. And if I took part in this as a kid, I think it would have changed my life. So I just wanted to shout it out in case there's like Canadian teachers out there that have power over where you take children on field trips. I don't know how that works, but the interpretive center offers a bunch of different school programs, but there's one that's for grades seven through 12, I think it was. It's available all year round and it's called Killer Mountain CSI. And it's a program where students become CSI recruits to examine a cold case where they examine the case of Frank slide, in which nearly 100 people were killed.

• 53:45Danielle LaRock?

  And they have to go about and like take this interpretive hike and hear all these presentations and then come up with what caused Turtle Mountain to become a killer. They take this one and a half mile or kilometer, sorry, guided trail walk through the quote unquote crime scene, like the debris field. And they examine all this evidence of like geologic evidence to solve this like quote.

• 54:09Cassandra Yahnian?

  Another morbid teaching. I'm here for it.

• 54:13Danielle LaRock?

  Isn't that cool though? Like that is how you capture imagination.

• 54:17Cassandra Yahnian?

  And attention and how especially when you're teaching history.

• 54:22Danielle LaRock?

  And geology, like come on.

• 54:23Cassandra Yahnian?

  Geology. Kids are gonna kill.

• 54:25Danielle LaRock?

  I struggled for my life trying to tell you about pie. You know what I mean? Like that was hard.

• 54:30Cassandra Yahnian?

  And you told me pumpkin and I pictured apple the whole time.

• 54:33Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, I'm like, we're not even on the same page. So it's like, it's just really cool that this is the type of stuff that exists now. And you're conveying the same information just through a different approach that I think is just a little bit more memorable. But anyway, so I wanted to shout that out. And then two other things. I looked up the last survivor of the slide. To pass away. Her name was Gladys Ennis Verquen and she died in Bellevue, Washington on March 20th, 1993.

• 55:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh, we were alive.

• 55:05Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah, she was 91. And then because I love a hotel, we got to end on this. Except there were buildings that still survived the slide, right? You know, the whole entire town wasn't, wasn't taken out. And the hotel where the brother and sister were staying that saved their lives, the shoe repair shop guy and his sister. That hotel was called the Imperial Hotel and of course, the building. Uh, I think it got damaged a little bit, but of course it was still standing. People lived. And following the slide, the hotel owner, Mr. A. Mutz, had it like disassembled and shipped to Vulcan, which is a town just south of Calgary.

• 55:49Danielle LaRock?

  And it was shipped in pieces and rebuilt in the town of Vulcan. And it reopened its doors in 1912, nine years after the Frank Slide tragedy. And it's still open today.

• 56:03Cassandra Yahnian?

  Whoa, a historic hotel.

• 56:06Danielle LaRock?

  That, I know. Okay. I do have to say. Before everyone's like, oh, my God, and Googling it. I don't know if I would stay there.

• 56:15Cassandra Yahnian?

  Okay.

• 56:16Danielle LaRock?

  And I think it's seen better days before April 29th of 1903. But it's like, it's one of those things that if you looked at a picture, you would never guess it was a historic hotel.

• 56:27Cassandra Yahnian?

  Got.

• 56:27Danielle LaRock?

  Ever.

• 56:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  What's it called? I want to look at it.

• 56:30Danielle LaRock?

  So it's called the Vulcan Hotel now, I think, because they renamed it. And it has really bad reviews. And it looks, Cassie, you would never say, you would not say there. Um, it looks a little worse for wear, but it, I just want to shout out that it does exist. And it's just like a really cool example of an unassuming building you would never look twice at. And yet it has this crazy history of surviving a natural disaster, being disassembled, shipped, rebuilt, and open for over 100 years.

• 57:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  I have to be looking at the wrong thing.

• 57:06Danielle LaRock?

  No, you think you are, you're not.

• 57:07Cassandra Yahnian?

  Is there an African safari in it?

• 57:09Danielle LaRock?

  Yes.

• 57:13Danielle LaRock?

  There sure is, yeah.

• 57:14Cassandra Yahnian?

  It has a TV from like 1999 in one of the rooms.

• 57:18Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 57:18Cassandra Yahnian?

  Wow.

• 57:20Danielle LaRock?

  I like, so I'm saying, I'm not saying go there. Okay, I, I feel like.

• 57:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  It exists.

• 57:26Danielle LaRock?

  It exists, and I wanted to point that out.

• 57:29Cassandra Yahnian?

  Wow.

• 57:30Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 57:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  Well, it has some good reviews on it, though.

• 57:34Danielle LaRock?

  Does it?

• 57:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 57:35Danielle LaRock?

  I thought its overall rating was kind of bad.

• 57:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  I mean.

• 57:38Danielle LaRock?

  I do know, and I didn't want to get too.

• 57:40Cassandra Yahnian?

  This one says creepy place, but big rooms with cool themes.

• 57:44Danielle LaRock?

  It's like, I don't even know if you know how creepy it actually is.

• 57:46Cassandra Yahnian?

  Totally worthless.

• 57:51Danielle LaRock?

  But like in the actual, the, before it was disassembled and relocated, they had a lot of meetings there for, um, recovery efforts and search efforts. A lot of people gathered in the hotel and it was just kind of a central location that was used directly after the slide and stuff. I don't know. It just has cool history, but, um, yeah, I don't know.

• 58:13Cassandra Yahnian?

  Interesting.

• 58:14Danielle LaRock?

  Big rooms, but creepy. Apparently.

• 58:16Cassandra Yahnian?

  Your choice, if you guys want to stay there or not.

• 58:20Danielle LaRock?

  So yeah, that's the story of the Frank slide, which I believe remains the biggest in uh, North American history.

• 58:28Cassandra Yahnian?

  Well, it kind of reminded me of when you did the slide in uh, to a small, this was a smaller scale, but in the White Mountains.

• 58:37Danielle LaRock?

  Me?

• 58:38Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, you covered the slide that happened. Uh, why am I blanking on the name of it?

• 58:45Danielle LaRock?

  Oh my God, I know. The family-

• 58:47Cassandra Yahnian?

  I'm blanking the name. I've been there.

• 58:49Danielle LaRock?

  It starts with a W, I think.

• 58:50Cassandra Yahnian?

  It does start with a W for sure.

• 58:52Danielle LaRock?

  Shoot.

• 58:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  And it's in-

• 58:55Danielle LaRock?

  Shoot.

• 58:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's in the White Mountains.

• 58:57Danielle LaRock?

  It's in the White Mountains National Forest.

• 58:58Cassandra Yahnian?

  It is.

• 58:59Danielle LaRock?

  And the family felt this landslide coming and they got so scared they fled their home and they all got caught up and died in the slide, but because their home was like underneath this rock ledge, the entire slide went all the way around their house. So their house actually survived and they would have survived if they stayed in the home.

• 59:21Cassandra Yahnian?

  And they left their dog behind and their dog survived.

• 59:23Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 59:24Cassandra Yahnian?

  The Wiley House.

• 59:25Danielle LaRock?

  Thank you.

• 59:26Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah, the Wiley slide in 1826 was in Crawford Notch.

• 59:30Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah.

• 59:31Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. Yeah, it kind of reminded me of that episode a little bit. And that one, um, if people haven't listened to that episode yet, you should, cause it's in our home state, but that one, they have a little house at the bottom or they have a, it's called the Wiley Rest Stop or the Wiley House and it's a little coffee shop and gift shop and stuff that's right there where it all happened.

• 59:54Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. The original house doesn't stand anymore, but it's on the site.

• 59:57Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah.

• 59:58Danielle LaRock?

  Yeah. Great. Well, there, there, that is.

• 1:00:02Cassandra Yahnian?

  There it is. Another one.

• 1:00:04Danielle LaRock?

  Another one.

• 1:00:04Cassandra Yahnian?

  Checked off.

• 1:00:05Danielle LaRock?

  Checked off.

• 1:00:06Cassandra Yahnian?

  You did it.

• 1:00:07Danielle LaRock?

  Oh yeah. And so that, this doesn't have a national park tie.

• 1:00:11Cassandra Yahnian?

  Oh yeah.

• 1:00:11Danielle LaRock?

  If you didn't notice.

• 1:00:12Cassandra Yahnian?

  Yeah. I heard you say like two hours north of Glacier and Waterton National Parks. And I was like, and the rest, is it in a national forest or a?

• 1:00:23Danielle LaRock?

  No. Well, maybe.

• 1:00:25Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's in a forest.

• 1:00:28Danielle LaRock?

  It's not located anywhere.

• 1:00:30Cassandra Yahnian?

  It's nowhere.

• 1:00:31Danielle LaRock?

  It's nowhere.

• 1:00:34Danielle LaRock?

  Oh my God.

• 1:00:35Cassandra Yahnian?

  The first.

• 1:00:36Danielle LaRock?

  But it was outside.

• 1:00:37Cassandra Yahnian?

  Done. It was outside.

• 1:00:39Danielle LaRock?

  And it had to do with a mountain and a natural disaster and history.

• 1:00:43Cassandra Yahnian?

  We're getting, we're going off the rails here.

• 1:00:46Danielle LaRock?

  I know. I'm going through something right now and I didn't get bangs, but I decided to do this episode.

• 1:00:53Cassandra Yahnian?

  This episode is the equivalent of getting bangs.

• 1:00:56Danielle LaRock?

  It is.

• 1:00:56Cassandra Yahnian?

  For the podcast.

• 1:00:57Danielle LaRock?

  So please forgive me during this time and respect my privacy.

• 1:01:02Cassandra Yahnian?

  Well, while Danielle goes through this crisis, we hope you all enjoy the view.

• 1:01:09Danielle LaRock?

  But watch your back.

• 1:01:10Cassandra Yahnian?

  Bye, everyone.

• 1:01:11Danielle LaRock?

  Bye.

• 1:01:14Danielle LaRock?

  Thanks for joining us for another episode. We hope you learned something new and have another location to put on your list. If you want more NPAD content, make sure to follow along with our adventures on all socials at National Park After Dark. For more stories just like this one with the added bonus of exclusive content, you can join us on Patreon or Apple subscriptions. If you prefer to watch our episodes, head over to our YouTube channel. And if you're enjoying the show, please take a moment to rate, review, and subscribe on your favorite listening platform.

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