East Coulee

Last summer I purchased a commercial building in the small town of East Coulee.  Seventy Five years ago East Coulee was a booming coal mine town with a large population.  One by one the mines shut down and many of the residents moved away.  The last mine to close was the Atlas Coal Mine in the 1970's.  It is now a historic site and a tourist attraction and is located downstream a little and across the Red Deer River from town.  In recent years East Coulee has been annexed by the Town of Drumheller and now has about 150 residents.  With the recent closure of the East Coulee Hotel and the adjacent Antique Store there are effectively no businesses or services left in town.  The School has been designated a historic site and is in the process of being restored.  It houses a museum, gift shop and a small cafe.  

My building is a commercial building in the middle of a residential neighborhood.  Town zoning rules prohibit any heavy industrial use, which has greatly depressed the value of this property.  That made it very affordable for me to purchase, and the town has given permission for Dinosaur Valley Studios to operate from it.  Dinosaur Valley Studios is the operating name of Palcoprep Inc. the company that I am a shareholder of.  The building is leased to the operating company and serves as a base for our artistic operations.

It is the history of the building that I will outline here...  The west portion of the building was originally Sloan's Garage, the local Texaco Service Station.  I understand that it was built in 1937.  An acquaintance of mine, Gilles Danis, operated a company called Prehistoric Animal Structures [PAST for short] back in the 1990's.  His wife was a daughter of the Sloan family that operated the original Texaco Station.  PAST set up operations in the original shop and later added two pre-engineered metal building extensions to the property.  I understand that these additions were added in the mid to late 1990's.  Around that time PAST ceased operations and the property was sold.  A local real estate developer owned it for a while and used it mostly as a storage shop for some of his tools and equipment.  I purchased the building from him last summer, and our Dinosaur Valley Studios operation moved in through the latter part of 2014.

Here are a couple of photographs of what the building looks like now.  One was taken last summer and the other about a week ago...

There was a fire in the original garage portion of the building many years ago.  I'm not sure exactly when this occurred but it may have been as long ago as 60 years.  The wood structure of the building became charred but did not collapse.  Some structural steel columns and trusses were added to provide additional support to the weakened wood structure.  While I was there last week, working on rebuilding the skylight, it became very evident that the building has settled and sagged and is showing its age.  After all, it is about 80 years old.  But it seems to be pretty sound and I am confident that it remain functional for many years to come.  While we were in town last week the girls and I made a visit to the East Coulee School Museum.  There are a number of old photographs exhibited there that show what the town looked like in it's heydey.  A couple of them include views of my building.  This first one, based on the car parked out front, was probably taken in the 1960's...

This next one is quite a bit older, and shows a view looking down 2nd Avemue to the west.  This is the road located immediately in front of the building.  Back in the day this was main street East Coulee.  The Texaco sign of Sloan's Garage is visible just beyond the Hotel.  The hotel sat on land that is now part of my property.  It was not quite where the building additions are now located, but sat on what is now part of the yard.  The shops and stores across the street are now all gone, replaced by houses, including one very large new one immediately across the street.  I find it very difficult to imagine what this town must have once been like, particularly since it is now such a quiet, sleepy place.

There is an RV pad with full hook up in the yard adjacent to the building.  This is our private camping spot where we park our trailer when we visit during the summer.  The town is very laid back and quiet and it is a great place to spend a few weekends in the summer.  I kind of hope the town stays this way.  On one hand I want it to hang on and prosper a little and remain an inhabited community.  But I don't want to see it completely redeveloped and built up and get a lot busier.  There are a few derelict properties and abandoned buildings that could use a little cleanup and it would be nice to see the population remain stable, or grow a little, but that is the extent of what is needed in my opinion.