The highest-elevation cemetery in Canada is right next to a ghost town

Tucked away in the beautiful mountains of Alberta is a historic ghost town, and nearby you will find the highest-elevation cemetery in Canada.

Just past the small community of Cadomin in western Alberta, you’ll find the Mountain Park Cemetery.

According to information posted at the location, the cemetery is approximately 5,850 feet above sea level and is known as the highest-elevation cemetery in Alberta and Canada.

This cemetery was never registered, and the first burial took place in 1913. Even to this day, the cemetery is exceptionally well taken care of, especially considering its remote location.

Laine Mitchell/Daily Hive

The Mountain Park Cemetery registrars from 1915 to 1950 were the doctors or postmasters. With the nearby mine closing in 1950, the cemetery was closed to coffin burials. Numbered plots/sites were designated for the majority of burials prior to 1950. A Plot plan (map) from 1915 to 1950 was never found, and only registry records exist. From 1957, many former Mountain Park, Cadomin, and Luscar residents have placed their loved ones’ ashes or memorial plaques on family plots, or on the knoll.

In 1974, former Mountain Park residents and friends replaced the original wooden perimeter cemetery fence with a chain-link one, given that the former had deteriorated. They enlarged the original cemetery size to include the 1973 ashes, burial, and memory markers on the knoll.

Laine Mitchell/Daily Hive

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In August 1992, a monument dedication ceremony was held to honour the former Mountain Park mine, the town, and residents.

In August 1997, 85 original Mountain Park residents, their families, friends, and Cadomin residents gathered at the cemetery to clear out the tall buckbrush and other debris. During that process, more than 60 hidden grave sites were discovered, many without their original wooden grave markers. Many gravesite locations remain unknown to this day.

After grizzly bears damaged the cemetery in 2006, the Elk Valley Coal company (Cheviot Mine) donated heavy chain-link material and two employees to rebuild the fence. In 2011, Tech Coal Limited (Cheviot Mine) enlarged the parking lot and rebuilt the access gates.

Mountain Park was a multicultural community. The individual death records include the known country of origin, the known birth year, and the date of death. There is additional information showing the high infant mortality and various causes of death. Many of the victims in the cemetery were involved in accidents at the nearby mine.

Laine Mitchell/Daily Hive

What was the community of Mountain Park?

Laine Mitchell/Daily Hive

The historic coal mining ghost town of Mountain Park was founded in 1911 thanks to the creation of the Mountain Park Coal Company and was a thriving community with churches, a hospital, a community hall, a theatre, a library with reading rooms, card rooms, a billiards parlour, and restaurants.

As one of the several communities that formed the Coal Branch of Alberta due to the construction of the Canadian National Railway and the demand for coal, people from across the country brought their families to live in Mountain Park.

Annual sporting events and picnics brought the people of these towns together. Games of tug-of-war and running jump were popular, but the most celebrated and fiercely contested event was the long-distance run up “Mount Harris.”

On Aug. 1, 1935, the first race to the top of  “Mount Harris” was run. The rules were simple, requiring runners to cross the bridge at the base of the townsite and take their own route up the mountain. Two officials were at the top of the mountain to see that the participants ran around a pole before heading back down to the finish line.

The town was known for recruiting exceptionally good athletes, with Mountain Park having dazzling hockey, soccer and baseball teams, and some of the finest athletes in the country played their chosen sport up there at a dizzying 6,200 feet above sea level. During the depression years, these athletes could be successfully recruited with a job offer.

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Not only were athletes easily recruited, but school teachers for the four-room school, a doctor and nurses for the hospital, as well as music teachers and musicians for the town band were, too.

The town peaked with an estimated population of 1,500 residents, and the good times lasted until the mid-1940s, at which time Mountain Park’s good fortune stopped. The nearby mine shuttered in 1950, and with it, much of the town was left deserted. Natural disasters, such as the McLeod River flooding, the economics of the operations, and customers’ changing from coal to diesel fuel, all took their toll and contributed to the closure of the once bustling mountain village.

Have you ever ventured up to Mountain Park and the nearby cemetery in Alberta before? Let us know in the comments.