Mountain Park is a ghost town in western

Alberta Alberta ( ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is part of Western Canada and is one of the three prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to the west, Saskatchewan to the east, the Northwest Ter ...

, south of Cadomin, elevation 6200 feet, at the end of the historic Alberta Coal Branch line of the Canadian National Railway (originally the

Grand Trunk Pacific Railway The Grand Trunk Pacific Railway was a historic Canadian transcontinental railway running from Fort William, Ontario (now Thunder Bay) to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, a Pacific coast port. East of Winnipeg the line continued as the National Tra ...

). Production of

steam coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal is formed when dea ...

for railroad use by the Mountain Park Coal Co. Ltd. began in 1912 or 1914.Ghost Towns of Alberta
/ref> It closed in 1950 in response to rising debt, declining coal markets, and a flood by the

McLeod River The McLeod River is a river in west-central Alberta, Canada. It forms in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, and is a major tributary of the Athabasca River. __TOC__ Course The river begins just outside the eastern border of Jasper Nation ...

that washed out the railroad bed. Mining throughout the area ceased as the railroads replaced steam locomotives with

diesel Diesel may refer to: * Diesel engine, an internal combustion engine where ignition is caused by compression * Diesel fuel, a liquid fuel used in diesel engines * Diesel locomotive, a railway locomotive in which the prime mover is a diesel engin ...

, and the town was quickly abandoned. Almost nothing remains of Mountain Park today, except for a restored cemetery and a few remnants of the mine. At its peak, the town was home to about 1,500 residents. Mountain Park was the site of another coal mining operation, the Cheviot Mine, which opened in 2005 despite environmental opposition. Cheviot was operated by Teck Coal Ltd. and produced

coking coal Metallurgical coal or coking coal is a grade of coal that can be used to produce good-quality coke. Coke is an essential fuel and reactant in the blast furnace process for primary steelmaking. The demand for metallurgical coal is highly coupled ...

for export to Japanese steel mills. It closed in 2020 due to declining coal reserves.

References

External links

Ghost Towns - Mountain Park
---- Ghost towns in Alberta Localities in Yellowhead County {{CentralAlberta-geo-stub