Midland Provincial Park | |
---|---|
Location | Drumheller / Starland County, Alberta, Canada |
Nearest city | Drumheller |
Coordinates | 51°28′41″N112°46′20″W / 51.47806°N 112.77222°W |
Area | 6.3 km2 |
Established | 5 Jun 1979 |
Governing body | Alberta Tourism, Parks and Recreation |
Midland Provincial Park is a provincial park located in Alberta, Canada.
Once the site of the Midland Coal Mine, it was designated as a provincial park on June 5, 1979. It now hosts the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology.
It is located 6 km west of Drumheller on Highway 838 (North Dinosaur Trail).
Activities in the park include canoeing, kayaking, fishing, wildlife viewing and hiking through willows and cottonwoods along the Red Deer River. Points of interest are fossil beds, a mine site and the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology.
Following a two-day halt in operations due to overproduction, 237 miners resumed work at the Midland Provincial Park mine.
At around 9:40 a.m., three blasts from the mine whistle alerted nearby residents to an emergency. The explosions were likely triggered by a spark, which could have been caused by a rock fall, a lamp flare, a short in an electric cable, or a prohibited cigarette. This spark ignited methane gas, which stirred up coal dust, leading to further blasts throughout the mine's tunnels. Of the 237 miners that had entered the mine that morning, only 46 emerged.
In addition to the initial explosions, the resultant lack of oxygen and the rise in poisonous carbon dioxide gas, known as "blackdamp" or "afterdamp," posed significant threats. The force of the explosions also had above-ground impacts, including the destruction of a 20 cm (8 in.) thick concrete wall of the hoist house. [1]
Drumheller is a town on the Red Deer River in the badlands of east-central Alberta, Canada. It is located 110 kilometres (68 mi) northeast of Calgary and 97 kilometres (60 mi) south of Stettler. The Drumheller portion of the Red Deer River valley, often referred to as Dinosaur Valley, has an approximate width of 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) and an approximate length of 28 kilometres (17 mi).
The Westray Mine was a Canadian coal mine in Plymouth, Nova Scotia. Westray was owned and operated by Curragh Resources Incorporated, which obtained both provincial and federal government money to open the mine, and supply the local electric power utility with coal.
A mining accident is an accident that occurs during the process of mining minerals or metals. Thousands of miners die from mining accidents each year, especially from underground coal mining, although accidents also occur in hard rock mining. Coal mining is considered much more hazardous than hard rock mining due to flat-lying rock strata, generally incompetent rock, the presence of methane gas, and coal dust. Most of the deaths these days occur in developing countries, and rural parts of developed countries where safety measures are not practiced as fully. A mining disaster is an incident where there are five or more fatalities.
The Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology is a palaeontology museum and research facility in Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. The museum was named in honour of Joseph Burr Tyrrell, and is situated within a 12,500-square-metre-building (135,000 sq ft) designed by BCW Architects at Midland Provincial Park.
The History of coal mining goes back thousands of years, with early mines documented in ancient China, the Roman Empire and other early historical economies. It became important in the Industrial Revolution of the 19th and 20th centuries, when it was primarily used to power steam engines, heat buildings and generate electricity. Coal mining continues as an important economic activity today, but has begun to decline due to the strong contribution coal plays in global warming and environmental issues, which result in decreasing demand and in some geographies, peak coal.
Dinosaur Provincial Park is a UNESCO World Heritage Site situated 220 kilometres east of Calgary, Alberta, Canada; or 48 kilometres (30 mi) northeast of Brooks.
Joseph Burr Tyrrell, FRSC was a Canadian geologist, cartographer, mining consultant and historian. He discovered dinosaur (Albertosaurus sarcophagus) bones in Alberta's Badlands and coal around Drumheller in 1884. Canada's Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Alberta was named in his honour.
New Waterford is an urban community in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality of Nova Scotia, Canada.
Alberta has been a tourist destination since the early days of the 20th Century, with attractions including national parks, National Historic Sites of Canada, urban arts and cultural facilities, outdoor locales for skiing, hiking and camping, shopping locales such as West Edmonton Mall, outdoor festivals, professional athletic events, international sporting competitions such as the Commonwealth Games and Olympic Winter Games, as well as more eclectic attractions.
Canmore Museum and Geoscience Centre (CMAGS) is the public name used by the Centennial Museum Society of Canmore. The Society was incorporated in 1984 under The Societies Act of the Province of Alberta. The society is also a registered charity. In June 2004, the museum moved from its original location to a new purpose built space in the Canmore Civic Centre. Spanning generations, cultures and social classes, the museum presents over 120 years worth of local history.
Provincial historic sites of Alberta are museums and historic sites run by the Government of Alberta.
Darren H. Tanke is a Canadian fossil preparation technician of the Dinosaur Research Program at the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller, Alberta. Born in Calgary, Tanke became interested in natural history at an early age. In 1979, Tanke began working for Philip J. Currie in the paleontology department of the Provincial Museum of Alberta, originally as a volunteer. From 1979 until 2005 Tanke worked as a lab and field technician, a job he still holds today.
The Atlas Coal Mine National Historic Site is an inactive coal mine in Alberta, Canada that operated from 1936 to 1979. Located in East Coulee near Drumheller, it is considered to be Canada's most complete historic coal mine and is home to the country's last standing wooden coal tipple, and the largest still standing in North America. It was designated an Alberta Provincial Historic Resource in 1989 and a National Historic Site of Canada in 2002.
The Dinosaur Trail is a circular tourist route in the province of Alberta, Canada, located in the Canadian badlands paralleling the Red Deer River on both sides, from Drumheller to the Bleriot Ferry. It is divided in two segments, with the South Dinosaur Trail following the south side of the river and uses portions of Highway 575 and Highway 837, while North Dinosaur Trail follows the north side of the river and is the entirety of Highway 838. The north and south segments of Dinosaur Trail are connected by the Highway 9 / Highway 56 concurrency within Drumheller.
The Pike River Mine is a coal mine formerly operated by Pike River Coal 46 km (29 mi) north-northeast of Greymouth in the West Coast Region of New Zealand's South Island. It is the site of the Pike River Mine disaster that occurred on 19 November 2010, leading to the deaths of 29 men whose remains have not been recovered. The mine and its assets are owned by the Department of Conservation, whom, on 1 July 2022, assumed ownership and management following the dissolution of the Pike River Recovery Agency. The former mine site and its surrounding land are a part of Paparoa National Park.
The Minnie Pit disaster was a coal mining accident that took place on 12 January 1918 in Halmer End, Staffordshire, in which 155 men and boys died. The disaster, which was caused by an explosion due to firedamp, is the worst ever recorded in the North Staffordshire Coalfield. An official investigation never established what caused the ignition of flammable gases in the pit.
Midlandvale is a community within the Town of Drumheller, Alberta, Canada. It was previously a hamlet within the former Municipal District of Badlands No. 7 prior to being annexed by Drumheller in 1972. Now referred to as Midland by the Town of Drumheller, the community is located within the Red Deer River valley on North Dinosaur Trail, approximately 3 km (1.9 mi) west of Drumheller's main townsite.
Mining is an important industry in Pakistan. Pakistan has deposits of several minerals including coal, copper, gold, chromite, mineral salt, bauxite and several other minerals. There are also a variety of precious and semi-precious minerals that are also mined. These include peridot, aquamarine, topaz, ruby, emerald, rare-earth minerals bastnaesite and xenotime, sphene, tourmaline, and many varieties and types of quartz.
Jane Colwell-Danis is the first formally-trained female vertebrate paleontologist employed in Canada and was known for finding numerous rare fossils in the southern Canadian prairies.
On December 10, 1910, an explosion occurred underground in the West Canadian Collieries No. 1 Mine in the Crowsnest Pass community of Bellevue, Alberta. The explosion pushed all of the air out of the mine and filled it with afterdamp, a deadly gas that is a mixture of Carbon dioxide and Carbon monoxide, killing 30 of the 42 workers present at the time, as well as one rescue worker. The explosion was the first mining disaster in Alberta's history, and led to several changes in coal mining in the Crowsnest Pass. The event was soon overshadowed by the nearby Hillcrest mine disaster four years later, which killed 189 and is Canada's worst mining disaster to date.