Vanished Alberta
Alberta filled with coal towns in thirty years and emptied of them in thirty more. Some of those places are genuinely gone — foundations, coke ovens, a tended cemetery at 6,200 feet. Others get called ghost towns and are nothing of the kind: people live there, and this page keeps the two apart.
Ghost towns
No permanent residents. Every entry links the source for that claim.
- AnthraciteBanff National Park
A mining locality inside what is now Banff National Park, gone by the 1900s. Nothing stands; the site is interpreted rather than visited.
- LilleCrowsnest Pass
A coal village built by French investors in 1901 and abandoned by 1913. Coke ovens and building foundations remain, reached on foot.
- Mountain Park
A coal town at 6,200 feet, once among the highest settlements in Canada. The mine closed in 1950 and the site was cleared; its cemetery is still tended.
- SharplesKneehill County
A badlands coal siding that emptied when the mines closed. Little is left above ground.
Still lived in
These turn up on ghost-town lists constantly — including the list we started from. They are hamlets and communities with residents, and several are far better kept than the label suggests. If you visit, visit them as places where people live.
- DorothySpecial Area No. 2
A hamlet in the Red Deer River valley, best known for two small churches and a grain elevator standing against the badlands.
- RetlawMD of Taber
Once a village of more than 250 people, dissolved and much reduced — but an unincorporated community, not an empty one.
- RowleyStarland County
A hamlet north of Drumheller with a restored main street, kept up by the people who live there and known for its monthly pizza nights.
- WayneTown of Drumheller
Reached by eleven bridges along the Rosebud River. A coal town of thousands in the 1930s; a small community today, with the Last Chance Saloon still open.
Locations from Wikidata and the federal place-names gazetteer. Each entry's history links the article it came from — descriptions here are written for this page rather than copied. Know a place we've misdescribed, or one that belongs on either list? Tell us on the contact page, and say which section it belongs in.