It weighed an estimated 90 million tons.
Tourists get their pictures taken among the huge boulders at Frank, Canada.
About 80 bodies are still buried under these rocks.
Large surface cracks along the summit of the mountain allowed water to enter deep within Turtle Mountain.
Turtle Mountain was just waiting to fall.
They called it “the mountain that moves”.
The Canadian Pacific Railway ran special trains that brought people from neighboring communities to celebrate the event.
View from the north shoulder of Turtle Mountain.
The Frank townsite was where the old road leaves the slide on the left.
Frank Lake was created by the slide.
Photo credit:Keith McClary/Wikimedia
Turtle Mountain fell less than two years later.
The mine reopened within weeks of the disaster and Franks population not only recovered but grew.
There was now a new zinc smelter, a new three-story hotel and a small zoo.
But fears of a second slide continued to persist.
Finally in 1911, the government ordered the people to move because it was too risky.
Over the next several years the town was slowly dismantled.
The mine itself closed in 1917.
Today, Frank is a quiet residential community of about 200 people.
Rubble still covers about 300 hectares of the valley drawing roughly 100,000 tourists to the area every year.
Photo credit:www.wambold.ca
Turtle Mountain after the slide.
Photo credit:www.wambold.ca
Frank and Turtle Mountain after the 1903 landslide; photograph taken in 1911.
Photo credit:Canadian Disasters
The devastation of Frank, taken from Turtle Mountain in 1911.
Photo credit:Canadian Disasters
Aerial view of the 1903 Frank rockslide, taken in 1922.
Photo credit:Canadian Disasters
Sources:Wikipedia/Alberta Culture and Tourism
