Zinc Smelter

At one time, long ago, Frank Alberta was home to a zinc smelter. Built in the early 1900s, those behind it had great aspirations, but it never really got off the ground. All they could manage was couple test runs before shutting down. The place was doomed for a number of reasons – questionable design, high operating costs, and a gross misunderstanding of how the processes and marketing ends of things worked, all being contributing factors. There was no way it’d ever work. After standing empty for a time, it was later torn down.

Today about the only real remains left is the flue. Made of stonework, most of it collapsed, this connected the plant to a giant smokestack located part way up the hill. It survives on account of the steep ground which is unsuitable for redevelopment.

This was an exploratory trip. We plan to return in the summer to revisit the subject and write about it in more detail then. The story behind it is a fascinating one. Anyway, it’ll photograph better without the snow obscuring eveything.

Not far away…
A little of Lille and Mine number 1.
A little more Lille and a flat car.

Short Subjects: reports that for any number of reasons are brief in nature. They might be updates to older articles, previews of posts planned or not yet published, brief snippets of things that don’t fit in anywhere else or subjects that are so obscure that information on them can’t be found. Or sometimes we just ramble on about Lord knows what.

If you need any more information on what we talked about here, by all means contact us!

Date of adventure: December, 2016.
Location: Frank, AB.
The remains are on private property. BIGDoer.com was there with permission.

Some remains of the Frank Alberta Zinc Smelter (private property).