Mercoal, a former coal mining town, is located in the

Yellowhead County Yellowhead County is a municipal district in west central Alberta, Canada. It is the only municipal district within Alberta census division No. 14. History *1994: Established as a ''Municipal District of Yellowhead No. 94'' on January 1. ...

of western

Alberta Alberta is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province in Canada. It is a part of Western Canada and is one of the three Canadian Prairies, prairie provinces. Alberta is bordered by British Columbia to its west, Saskatchewan to its east, t ...

, Canada. It was one of several communities along the historic Coal Branch segment of 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 ...

(now part of the

Canadian National Railway The Canadian National Railway Company () is a Canadian Class I freight railway headquartered in Montreal, Quebec, which serves Canada and the Midwestern and Southern United States. CN is Canada's largest railway, in terms of both revenue a ...

), which included Embarras,

Robb Robb is a surname of Scottish origin, formed from a diminution (reduction) of the name Robert. Robert was a popular name, especially after its use by three Scots Kings in the fourteenth century. Rob is first recorded as a surname in the mid-15th ...

, Coalspur, Coal Valley,

Cadomin Cadomin is a Hamlet (place), hamlet in west-central Alberta, Canada, within Yellowhead County. It is along the McLeod River in the Rocky Mountain Foothills, foothills of the Rocky Mountains, approximately south of Hinton, Alberta, Hinton near ...

, Luscar, and Mountain Park. At its peak in the late 1940s and early 1950s the town had over 800 residents. Mercoal declined after the mines closed in 1959, and it is now essentially a

ghost town A ghost town, deserted city, extinct town, or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economi ...

with only a small number of summer residences remaining. It is situated on Highway 40, southwest of Edson, west of Coalspur.

History

Mercoal's name was an acronym for the McLeod River Hard Coal Company, co-owned by Nick Gurvich, who opened an

underground coal mine Coal mining is the process of extracting coal from the ground or from a mine. Coal is valued for its energy content and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extrac ...

in 1920. In 1924 the mine was sold to Saunders Ridge Coal Company, Ltd.Toni Ross, Oh! The Coal Branch (Edmonton: Friesen, 1974), p. 59 The Mercoal mine was the last major operator in the Coal Branch area, and it attracted workers from other Coal Branch towns after the closure of the mines at Mountain Park in 1950 and

in 1952. The Mercoal mine finally closed on July 17, 1959.

References

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