On Wednesday October 22nd Helena and I set out in the morning with Gord. Nigel had some online meetings and had to stay behind at the rental house, and Arturo decided to sleep in. We set off for Dorothy. We started by driving up to the top of the valley, on the west side of the river, and viewing the townsite below in early morning light. Then we went into town and checked out the old churches, and some of the other old stuff. It brought back a lot of memories for Helena, as we regularly camped at the park in town with our trailer, when the kids were little.
Later we headed back towards East Coulee and explored a little across the river from town. There were three coal mines here back in the day... Western Monarch, Atlas and Murray. The Atlas was the last working mine in the valley, closing in the 1970's, and remains largely intact. The other two are long gone and only a few remnants remain. The old timber bridge once shared train and vehicle traffic across the Red Deer River. It has been long closed and has become badly deteriorated. The deck is mostly rotted out, and it has been closed to even pedestrians for a number of years. The truss on the west end, closest to the mine, is beginning to collapse. At the first pier the beams have begun to rot out and the bridge truss has collapsed about a foot. Some of the upper bracing has twisted out of position. It is sad that this once proud monument falls apart and there is no funding to preserve it.
It was a rather cold morning, with a heavy frost. We had to scrape the truck windows before we hit the road. It began to warm up by the time we got to the bridge. but there was a mud puddle there with ice on it, that had a rather interesting pattern. Later in the afternoon it warmed up nicely and we enjoyed the rest of the day with our entire gang.
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