Exploring Bankhead, Alberta | The Canadian Ghost Town That Disappeared

At the base of Cascade Mountain, a town rose fast. In 1903, Bankhead was brand new, a modern coal town. Nearly 1,000 people called it home. It had electricity. It had sewers. Things nearby Banff did not have yet. This place was built with confidence, built to last, built like it would always be here. But by 1925, Bankhead was gone, not abandoned, not forgotten, taken apart piece by piece. Join me as I explore the ruins of the abandoned ghost town of Bankhead, Alberta. In August of 2025, I took my daughter on a week-long trip to Alberta to see the usual sights and some not-so-usual sights. Look, I feel like I should be seeing water by now. One of those not-so-usual sights was the ghost town of Bankhead, Alberta, which was only a 20-minute drive up the mountain from our hotel in Banff. Vittoria wasn't really all that interested in visiting the ghost town with me, and she said she had some other much more important things to do. But I need to show you the best thing I've ever had. So this is a cruffin, a croissant, and a muffin. Very important, as you can see. Anyway, where were we? Oh, yeah, Bankhead. But yes, those cruffins were hella bussin'. All right, guys. Today, I'm in Alberta, and we're in Banff. And we're in one of my favorite types of things to explore. We're in a ghost town. This is the ghost town of Bankhead, an old mining town. Bankhead was a coal mine owned by the Canadian Pacific Railway. And they used the coal mine to provide the coal for all of their trains. Unfortunately, it was only in service for about 20 years. Now, we're going to learn a lot more through my voiceover. I'm here to walk through, do some footage and some filming, check things out. But basically, where we are right now is this used to be a total, complete mine. All of this property, just like when I was at Anyox, this was all mining activity up here, which is now pretty much gone. So we're going to learn more things as we're here. So let's go walk around. Let's go check it out. Let's check out the abandoned ghost town of Bankhead. Let's go. So it's super easy when you get here. Here's your parking lot right there. You walk up here. You've got an overlook that shows you a look over the valley where everything used to be. And then here you have some photos and some information all about Bankhead. OK, I do have my bear spray because there is a pretty good likelihood when you're at Bankhead that there is going to be a bear encounter. So let's see what happens. I am a little bit sick. Not of you guys. But I have got a little bit of a cold on this trip, unfortunately. The steps that I am walking down right now are taking us into Lower Bankhead. I am actually directly over the spot where the main entrance to the mine once opened. Every shift, miners lined up here. They collected their safety lamps. Then they went underground. From this opening, the mine expanded deep into Cascade Mountain. Miles of tunnels were driven into the rock. In April of 1922, a major strike shut everything down. By June, this entrance was sealed, and the mine never reopened. The opening was filled in, and today, all that remains is the ground beneath my feet. All right, so here's our first informational plaque. Main Tunnel Entrance. From 1904 to 1922, coal was extracted from the heart of Cascade Mountain. Here before you lies the location of the main tunnel entrance called Tunnel A. Coal was also mined on two more levels, namely B and C, both upslope from here. As Bankhead succumbs to her fate, all mine entrances were sealed by blasting. So here is a picture of a locomotive, and straight ahead would have been a tunnel, which is now stairs. All right, guys, what do we got here? Not much left of this. Lamp House. This is the part where I would normally narrate a bit of info for you about the Lamp House, but today, you get this instead. The Lamp House played a vital role in the total mining operation. Each miner was assigned a numbered mining lamp. These lamps would be given to the miners at the beginning of their shift and were returned to the Lamp House at the completion of the shift. If a miner's lamp was missing, a search for the miner would be initiated. Oh, smart. So that's a way to keep track of who's who and who's where and what's what. And here's a picture of what the lamps were. So you picture all the guys coming out of the mine, coming and going, got to pop into this building here, get their headlamp, and then be on their way. Hey, guys, you can get in over here, it looks like. This might be a part of the, maybe the floor or a collapsed wall. It was just pouring here, so I'm glad to see that it finally stopped. What's this say? You guys probably, there we go. In the early 1900s, this was a coal mining site. Substances associated with mining remain in the area and may cause health risks. Please stay on the trails and do not pick or eat any vegetation. A monitoring program is underway. So it says I can go left or I can go right from the Lamp House. And since there's a sign that says E, we're going to go this way. Here is a foundation of some sort. Something would have been right here. I don't know what that would have been, though. Okay, we've got a building up here. It's a transformer building. This small concrete building escaped being destroyed or removed when Bankhead shut down in 1922. It once housed transformers, which converted electricity generated in the powerhouse to a standard voltage used in Bankhead and Banktown sites. The transformers are gone, but in their place are displays that tell the short story of Bankhead. The self-guided trail continues beyond the exhibit. So here you go. Can't really see anything, but there's a display in the window that tells you stuff, but we can't see that very well. Okay, too bad. So sad. Love that. They do have lights, but the lights don't seem to be turned on. It's very muddy here too, guys. I don't like it. So this is an original building, but they've installed windows and obviously new doors and apparently an alarm system. Okay, can't see anything in there. It's too bad. We got an ore car here or something. When the mine was in full swing, 400 carloads of coal were hauled out daily. Each of these cars carried two tons of coal to the tipple, where it was sorted and picked into different size classes. Bankhead's electric system was the envy of Banff and other small Alberta towns. Power was steam generated and regulated at the transformer building, lighting the town and running large electric motors. Okay, what's going to be next, guys? I already see another plaque up ahead and there's hardly anything left to tell you. Oh, cool. Powerhouse. Oh, too bad it's gone. These foundations once fought the vibrations of the steam engines, compressors and generators, which produced electricity for the mining operations and for homes in Bankhead and Banff. Hopefully I can find some pictures of what the powerhouse looked like. It probably looked a lot like the one at Anyox, just not as big. There's the plaque for this. What is this, guys? What is this? Mosquitoes are pretty bad here. Oh, there's a plaque over here. Looks like a slag pile right here. That's coal. That's a slag pile. I read that there's little slag piles everywhere here. Look at this foundation. Boiler house. In the boiler house, coal was burned to heat water in nine large boilers. The steam produced powered all of the machinery at Bankhead. And here's a picture of it. Oh, this was a big building, guys. Wow. And all past where we just walked, there would have been houses and buildings. That's what would have been right here. Huge. What a bummer that it's all gone. Oh, I'm gonna get all wet. Left a wall. Okay, so I am now inside the boiler house. All right, so there's three different bits of ruins here. See one. Watch this. Okay, so there's this little thing. But then right here, there's a big pipe sticking onto the ground. So somewhere there's gonna be a plaque telling us what this is all about. All right, so that's where we just came from back there. And I just showed you guys the building inside there. There's more up ahead. And then there's something right here. This looks like it would have been a pretty substantial building because I'm seeing foundation and concrete all over the place down there. Okay, so I'll keep going. And there's a plaque down there. So I'm guessing that the trail will continue on that way and take me around here. Okay, here we go, guys. We got another plaque here. Brickette building. Bankhead coal was very brittle. And up to 50% of the coal extracted from the mines had to be processed into briquettes. Here in the briquette building, the fine brittle coal was combined with pitch from Pennsylvania, which served as a binder. Then under great heat and pressure, briquettes were produced for heating homes and providing fuel for locomotive engines. 500 tons of briquettes could be produced daily. But the cost of production was too great to bring in any respectable profits. And here's what it looked like. Huge. Wow, that's a big building. Well, I just got really hungry all of a sudden. So I'd say like this is a pretty easy walk through so far. So if you guys come to Banff and you're interested in stuff like this, this is a pretty cool place. It's an easy walk. Well worn. And you got these plaques in front of everything. So you know what you're looking at. They did a really good job here, guys. And I've only seen one other group of people. Three teenagers. I hear people, but I don't see any. This, this is another slag pile. But there's also a foundation. This is a big slag pile. Yeah, this is a huge mound of slag. And there's a, there's a pipe sticking out right there. Another bit of a foundation. There's a piece of metal right there on another slag pile. So this back here must have been where they stored all the slag. See, there's another foundation right there. So let's find out what this is all about. Tipple. Ah, the tipple. The coal arrived at the tipple fragmented and mixed with rock. The rock coal mixture was transported over a series of screens, conveyors, and chutes. The rock was separated from the coal and the coal sorted into nine sizes. An average of 900 tons of coal was processed each day the tipple was in operation. Built in 1905, the tipple was a massive structure 30 meters high. The pride of the Canadian coal industry. Massive. This is just like a small piece of it. That is huge. I don't know how well you can see it off in the distance, but there's a nice big bright mountain straight ahead. That the sun is just beaming on. Big puddles and it just rained pretty hard. Slag heaps. They call it slag. Okay, slag. The rock and small chunks of low-grade coal the CPR could not sell was stockpiled in these mounds. Chinese immigrants who worked in the breaker building lived in a shantytown behind the heaps. The rhubarb growing wild among the rock and coal spread from the abandoned gardens of the Chinese workers after Bankhead died. Interesting. So there's heaps of behind the heaps there's rhubarb growing. That's pretty interesting as a result of the Chinese who lived in a shantytown. Interesting. See at Antioch's they call it slag. Here they call it slack. Slack. I don't care to go back and see the rhubarb get all covered in coal. Yeah, just like in Antioch's guys. There's a leftover locomotive. I wonder if this was like if these rails here were placed just for the purpose of this. Or if this is actually where the rail would have been. This number 101 KH Porter compressed air locomotive with hopper cars was used in the old Canmore mine just east of the park. The rails were donated by Coleman Collieries. So that answers my question guys. This is not authentic. This is from a different mine. Not from this one. Still kind of neat though. Coal train. Bankhead was a busy place. In the town's heyday mine trains like this shunted back and forth hauling coal from the main tunnel to the breaker building. Each car held two tons of coal and there were usually 30 cars to a train. The locomotive was powered by compressed air to reduce the chance of igniting methane gas in the tunnels. That's another foundation here guys. There's this here and then there's like a I'm on some kind of a mound right here. And there's a something going on here for sure. There's a pipe sticking out of the ground right here. And you can definitely tell that there's something that was going on here because the ground dips down and it looks like there was something here that went underground. But I don't know guys. What am I supposed to know? But can you make it out? Can you see it? The dip in the ground. So something was here. Maybe that would be the plaque over here. Maybe that'll tell us what's going on. Deep within the massive bulk of Cascade Mountain are coal seams which at one time were responsible for the birth and growth of Bankhead. The briquette town today. The briquette town. Today many of the scars of this once massive operation are hidden by the regrowth of trees and new vegetation. Residents of Bankhead came to know this area as the industrial section of town. The residential area being located further upslope from here. Okay I'm getting bored. I hope I'm almost done. I'm gonna wrap it up soon guys. Don't worry if this is boring to you. I hope I was able to maybe get some pictures, some photos of what this place looked like when it was in operation and maybe get you guys some more information on the voiceover. I'm not done yet but we're almost done. Oh there's a really old worn picture here but you can't see it anymore. So hopefully I'm able to pull something online. Holy Trinity Church built in 1908. People from various ethnic backgrounds lived side by side in the town of Bankhead. Polish, Italian, British, Russian, German, Irish, Czech and Slovakian, American and Canadian. Many worshipped together too at Bankhead's Holy Trinity Church. When the mine shut down in 1922 most Bankhead houses and stores were removed to Banff. The Holy Trinity Church however was sawn in half, loaded on flat cars for rail transport to Calgary. There it remained in service until 1962. Okay here it is guys. Used to be a pretty big old church here. That's all that's left of it though. Pretty big. Oh I'm out of breath. All right let's go inside. All right we're here we might as well. It's a pipe. Church pipe. Bankhead was a Canadian Pacific Railway coal town built to support mining on Cascade Mountain. Miners worked long shifts underground. Coal was moved by rail. That fuel powered steam locomotives. The town was well equipped for its time. There was a hotel, a theater, a pool hall. Shops lined the streets. Families lived here year round. Bankhead also had a Chinatown, a separate district, home to many Chinese workers who supported the mine and town. The coal from Bankhead supplied CPR operations. It also helped heat the Banff Springs Hotel. This was a working town. Busy, well funded. At the time, it felt permanent. Bankhead did not fail overnight. It failed for practical reasons. First, the coal. Bankhead produced anthracite, hard coal, but brittle. Once exposed to air, it fractured. Much of it turned to dust. Nearly half could not be sold. Then came the labor disputes. Tensions grew through the 1910s. Working conditions worsened. Pay became unstable. In April of 1922, a major strike shut operations down. Production stopped. Costs climbed. The Canadian Pacific Railway made its decision. On July 15, 1922, the mines were closed. Without the mine, the town had no purpose. And Bankhead's future ended there. Bankhead did not fade away. It was taken apart. When the mine closed, the buildings followed. Dozens of houses were lifted from their foundations, loaded onto skids, dragged away. Homes were moved to Banff, to Canmore, even to Calgary. The church went too. Reused, repurposed. What remained was not a town, just footprints. Concrete foundations where families once lived. Empty streets cut into the hillside. And the lamp house, still standing. A final marker of where Bankhead used to be. All right guys, that wraps it up. This has been the Bankhead ghost town. Another of my many, many, many ghost towns that I've explored and visited across Canada. You guys should check out the playlist that I have on ghost towns. I've got a bunch of videos from abandoned ghost towns in Saskatchewan and in BC. And more to come. So, hope you guys have enjoyed this one. It's been a pretty fun place to visit. Pretty cool location. So, there you go. Nothing but a bunch of woods left over. That's it. Hope you guys have enjoyed this one. Drop a like. Drop a comment. If you're here for the first time and you like this kind of stuff. Obscure places. Unique locations. Abandoned ghost towns. Abandoned houses. All that kind of stuff. Follow the channel guys. Hit that subscribe button. I gotta go. See you guys next time. Peace.