Ghost towns dot the Canadian Badlands

The Canadian Badlands is THE best road trip. No traffic, big skies and a wild west feel. It’s no wonder this region of southeastern Alberta is a favourite with movie makers. The classic cowboy western, Unforgiven, starring Clint Eastwood and Morgan Freeman, is one of several famous movies that have been filmed here. Tom Cochrane also chose the Badlands for his Life is a Highway video.

Ghost towns, lots of them, are a big part of the wild west appeal here. They’re incredibly photogenic. At the turn of the last century, railway companies lured settlers west with the promise of  land and prosperity but when the trains began to disappear, many of the  Badlands’ boom towns quickly went bust.

Grain elevators from bygone days stand like ghosts over Rowley, Alberta

A road trip here is different from a road trip in the eastern half of Canada where secondary highways pass through the centres of small towns. Here, early towns were built along railway lines. Highways came later.

Sam Leong's Saloon – home of Pizza Night in Rowley

Rowley (pop.9) is a Badlands’ ghost town. Thanks to highway signage, we found it four kilometres down a gravel road. It’s quickly gaining notoriety thanks to its”Pizza Night in Rowley”. Pizza pies are made to order and served to visitors on the last Saturday of every month, except in the dead of winter. The quirky idea was hatched by members of the Rowley Community Association, a small group of volunteers intent on keeping their ghost town going. I’ve been told they get up to 200 visitors each pizza night. We visited on a Tuesday morning though when the place seemed deserted. Then out of the blue, two young gals and a guy in a pick up truck appeared as we snapped pix of Rowley’s old grain elevators, railway station, and Sam’s Saloon. The latter is where everyone meets for pizza night, so the gals invited us into Sam’s for a look. For years, Sam Leong, an early Rowley resident, ran the place as a restaurant. Inch-deep sawdust covers the floor. There’s a massive wooden counter. An ornate cast iron stove stands in one corner and lots of old signs and calendars hang on the walls.

The great wooden tipple at the Atlas Coal Mine, near East Coulee, Alberta

Drumheller was the Fort MacMurray of coal mining back in 1912 when the Canadian National Railway opened up this part of Canada. Miners came in from all over the world. According to historian and Atlas Coal Mine “pit boss” Linda Digby, you could hear every language of Europe spoken around here back then. Coal miners worked in groups- Poles in one mine, Italians in another, and so on. Labour strife and the communist movement was strong. Fist fights broke out constantly and from 1910 through the 20s and 30s, there was plenty of rivalry among the 139 mines operating in the valley, including the Atlas Coal Mine. It closed in the early 1980s but today is national historic site open to the public. Entertaining tours are offered daily through the summer months and the mine’s old wooden tipple, the last one still standing in Canada, is a photographer’s delight. East Coulee across an iron bridge from the Atlas Coal Mine is becoming a ghost town. Some old miners still live here but its present day population of 120 or so is a far cry from its heyday when it had 2500 residents.

Last Chance Saloon by the Rosedeer Hotel in Wayne

The ghost town of Wayne is ten minutes away. It began as Rosedeer, one of several towns in the Drumheller Valley with Rose in their name. We crossed eleven planked bridges over six kilometres to reach Wayne (pop. 45). The old Rosedeer Hotel is still going strong here. Nicknamed ‘Bucket of Blood’ during its wild coal mining days, the Rosedeer is now one of two hotels that we came across where cooking your own steak is a Badlands tradition. The other is The Patricia Hotel in Patricia, a hamlet ten minutes from the Dinosaur Provincial Park gates.

One of the two churches in Dorothy

We found the ghost town of Dorothy forty minutes south of Drumheller on our way to Dinosaur Provincial Park. Tom Cochrane’s “Life is a Highway” road trip video features footage of it. An old abandoned Dorothy grain elevator stands guard along a stretch of newly paved highway and beside it, is a little gravel road we took to reach a weathered old church and school.

Part of the extensive windmill collection in Etzikom, Alberta

When Etzikom, southwest of Medicine Hat, lost its public school, this prairie town began to die. Present day population numbers are down to double digits but that hasn’t stopped a hard-working couple supported by area volunteers from trying to keep this ghost town alive. They’ve opened Canada’s only windmill museum in the former public school. We loved it. Assorted windmills stand in the school yard. They’re from all over including a big wooden one from Martha’s Vineyard. I have no idea how it landed in Etzikom but there’s got to be a good story behind it. Until our stop in Etzikom, I didn’t know the importance of windmills here. We found out electricity didn’t come to these parts until 1959 so, windmills were crucial to farm families. They allowed farmers to draw water (a hard commodity to come by in these parts) up from deep, underground streams, and they generated electricity. After Etzikom, we started to notice windmills all over the Badlands, many still drawing water for livestock.

McNeill Memorial United Church, Empress, Alberta

Some Badlands ghost towns are becoming artist colonies like the little hamlet of Empress. It’s right on the border of Saskatchewan in the Special Areas. You can read more about Empress and its artists in this Badlands post.

Many more ghost towns dot the Badlands and beyond in Alberta. Here is a good website for sourcing where some are: http://www.ghosttowns.com/canada/alberta/alberta.html