Mine Field

It looks like any other pasture or field, something you might expect to see cows or horses living in. Nothing seems out of the ordinary. Yet, mostly hidden from view by tall grass, there’s danger underfoot. Scattered here and there, randomly and numbering in the dozens if not more, are collapsed coal mine workings. Every step could mean disaster.

The location is Sheerness Alberta. They’ve been coal mining here for a long time. Early operations were underground (this one’s from the 1920s/1930s), even though the seams were often very shallow. That they were close to the surface meant the old tunnels were prone to collapse. When these happened the land was simply fenced and declared off limits.

The hole seen here is perhaps a story deep…maybe a little more. Looking in gives one a chill. What if where I’m standing collapses too? These subsidence pits, as they are called, will soon be gone, the land they’re on scheduled to be pit mined at some point in the not too distance future. The old miners only extracted a small amount of the coal available and there’s lots more to take with modern mining methods.

More coal mine remains…
One Mine Ridge.
Stirling Mine – Commander Mine – Nacmine Alberta.

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: July, 2017.
Location: Sheerness, AB.
The field shown is on mine property and off limits.

Danger underfoot – collapsed coal mine workings, Sheerness Alberta.