The Mist Mountain Formation is a geologic formation of latest Jurassic to earliest Cretaceous age in the Western Canada Sedimentary Basin that is present in the southern and central Canadian Rockies . It was named for outcrops along the western spur of Mist Mountain in Alberta by D.W. Gibson in 1979. The Mist Mountain Formation contains economically important coal seams that have been mined in southeastern British Columbia and southwestern Alberta .
31-527: The Mist Mountain Formation consists of interbedded light to dark grey siltstone , silty shale , mudstone , and sandstone , with localized occurrences of chert - and quartzite -pebble conglomerate and conglomeratic sandstone, as well as a series of economically important coal seams. The Mist Mountain Formation is part of the Kootenay Group , an eastward-thinning wedge of sediments derived from
62-453: A century. During World War One, an internment camp for prisoners of war was set up at rented premises in Fernie from June 1915 to October 1918. Underground coal mines were dug 10 kilometres (6.2 miles) away from the townsite in the narrow Coal Creek valley and until 1960 a small satellite community was known as Coal Creek stood adjacent to them. A variety of other mines were sunk into
93-401: A higher propensity for containing a significant clay fraction. Although often mistaken for a shale , siltstone lacks the laminations and fissility along horizontal lines which are typical of shale. Siltstones may contain concretions . Unless the siltstone is fairly shaly, stratification is likely to be obscure and it tends to weather at oblique angles unrelated to bedding. Siltstone
124-422: A nearby forest fire burnt its way into a lumber yard on the edge of the community and sparked a Dresden-style firestorm that melted brick and mortar and essentially erased the entire city in an afternoon. There were few casualties however and for a second time, a stately brick downtown core rose from the ashes. Today, these historic buildings, most of which still stand, are a treasured and distinctive feature of
155-585: A temporary encampment near Coal Creek . The Canadian Pacific Railway arrived in the valley the following year, and a townsite emerged parallel to the railway line slightly north of the initial encampment, or "Old Town." On May 23, 1902, a coal mine explosion killed 109 miners at the Crow's Nest Coal Mining Company. The disaster, one of the worst mining accidents in Canadian history, is largely forgotten in Fernie and overlooked by local historians after more than
186-438: Is a clastic sedimentary rock that is composed mostly of silt . It is a form of mudrock with a low clay mineral content, which can be distinguished from shale by its lack of fissility . Although its permeability and porosity is relatively low, siltstone is sometimes a tight gas reservoir rock, an unconventional reservoir for natural gas that requires hydraulic fracturing for economic gas production. Siltstone
217-798: Is an unusual rock, in which most of the silt grains are made of quartz . The origin of quartz silt has been a topic of much research and debate. Some quartz silt likely has its origin in fine-grained foliated metamorphic rock, while much marine silt is likely biogenic, but most quartz sediments come from granitic rocks in which quartz grains are much larger than quartz silt. Highly energetic processes are required to break these grains down to silt size. Among proposed mechanism are glacial grinding; weathering in cold, tectonically active mountain ranges; normal weathering, particularly in tropical regions; and formation in hot desert environments by salt weathering. Siltstones form in relatively quiet depositional environments where fine particles can settle out of
248-487: Is uncertain. Plant fossils from the Mist Mountain Formation include remains of ferns , cycads , cycadeoids , ginkgos , and extinct conifers . No remains of flowering plants have been reported. Indeterminate fossil ornithischian tracks are also known from the formation. None of the fossils are sufficiently time-sensitive to date the formation precisely. Economically important coal seams in
279-423: The 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada , Fernie had a population of 6,320 living in 2,597 of its 3,256 total private dwellings, a change of 17.1% from its 2016 population of 5,396. With a land area of 15.11 km (5.83 sq mi), it had a population density of 418.3/km (1,083.3/sq mi) in 2021. According to the 2021 census , religious groups in Fernie included: Fernie has
310-674: The Canada–US border to north of the North Saskatchewan River . It thins eastward, ranging from 665 metres (2,180 ft) thick near Elkford , British Columbia, to less than 25 metres (80 ft) in the eastern foothills in Alberta. Farther to the east it was truncated by pre- Aptian erosion. The Mist Mountain Formation is the middle unit of the Kootenay Group. It rests conformably on the cliff-forming sandstones of
341-636: The Rockies that crosses the range via the Crowsnest Pass , 40 kilometres (25 miles) to the east. As the largest and longest-established community between Cranbrook and Lethbridge , Fernie serves as a minor regional centre, particularly for its fellow Elk Valley communities. Fernie is the only city-class municipality in Canada that is fully encircled by the Rocky Mountains . The townsite
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#1732772636586372-681: The Rocky Mountains . Founded in 1898 and incorporated as the City of Fernie in July 1904, the municipality has a population of over 5,000 with an additional 2,000 outside city limits in communities under the jurisdiction of the Regional District of East Kootenay . A substantial seasonal population swells the city during the winter months. Fernie lies on the Elk River , along Canada 's southernmost east-west transportation corridor through
403-538: The Asian industrial market, predominantly for use in blast furnaces . Fernie would remain an important residential base for mine labour, along with the new communities of Sparwood and Elkford that sprang up much closer to these new mines. Today, Teck Resources operates four open-pit mines, shipping out unit trains (often with more than 100 cars) along the Canadian Pacific Railway through Fernie to
434-584: The City of Fernie declared a state of emergency and people had to evacuate the area for days. The 'Riders were relocated because of this to the Elk Valley Leisure Centre in Sparwood, British Columbia during the 2017–18 KIJHL season until the City of Fernie decided what to do. The City of Fernie decided to replace ammonia for a synthetic refrigerant prior to the 2018–19 KIJHL season and moved
465-516: The Mist Mountain Formation reach a maximum thickness of 18 metres (60 ft). Seams occur throughout the formation, and some of the seams near the base for the formation are regionally extensive. The formation was strongly folded and faulted during the Laramide Orogeny , which brought the coal to surface in many places. This also produced localized thickening and thinning of the coal in some areas due to shearing and fault-repetition of
496-896: The Moose Mountain Member of the Morrissey Formation , and is conformably overlain by the Elk Formation . In the eastern foothills, the Elk Formation has been removed by erosion and the Mist Mountain Formation is unconformably overlain by the Cadomin Formation . North of the North Saskatchewan River , the Mist Mountain Formation grades into the Nikanassin Formation . Correlation south of the Canada–United States border
527-554: The Pacific Coast, where the coal is loaded onto freighters at Roberts Bank Superport in Delta . The Flathead Valley avalanches were two avalanches that buried 11 snowmobilers near Fernie on December 28, 2008. The avalanches ultimately claimed the lives of eight of the riders. After a disastrous fire levelled much of the downtown core in 1904, the fledgling municipal government passed an ordinance requiring all buildings in
558-415: The area to be built of 'fireproof' materials like brick and stone. Consequently, a new city centre rose from the ashes sporting brick buildings along broad avenues that would have looked more at home in a sedate and refined Victorian city than a rough-and-tumble frontier coal town . They were short-lived, however, as a second, larger inferno swept through the city on August 1, 1908. Whipped up by sudden winds,
589-533: The area were more interested in the mountains' innards. The vast Crowsnest Coal Field lies just to the east of the city, and Fernie owes its origins to nineteenth-century prospector William Fernie, who established the coal industry that continues to exist to this day. Acting on pioneer Michael Phillips' twin discoveries of coal and the Crowsnest Pass a few years earlier, Fernie founded the Crows Nest Pass Coal Company in 1897 and established
620-557: The clay and silt fraction is composed of silt-sized particles. Silt is defined as grains 2–62 μm in diameter, or 4 to 8 on the Krumbein phi (φ) scale . An alternate definition is that siltstone is any sedimentary rock containing 50% or more of silt-sized particles. Siltstones can be distinguished from claystone in the field by chewing a small sample; claystone feels smooth while siltstone feels gritty. Siltstones differ significantly from sandstones due to their smaller pores and
651-537: The coal fields in a fifty-kilometre (31 mi) radius in the following two decades. No mining was ever carried out in Fernie proper; coking of Coal Creek coal was carried out at the townsite, but otherwise, the town developed into an administrative and commercial centre for the burgeoning industry. Forestry played a smaller role in the local economy and a local brewery produced Fernie Beer from Brewery Creek (mountain spring water). Like most single-industry towns, Fernie endured several boom-and-bust cycles throughout
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#1732772636586682-562: The community. Summer in Fernie is generally far quieter than the winter months, though mountain biking , fly fishing and golf are increasingly important tourist draws. On October 17, 2017, there was an ammonia leak at the Fernie Memorial Arena which killed three workers (two City of Fernie employees and one CIMCO refrigeration employee from Calgary) during the Ghostriders ' regular season. Because of this tragedy,
713-618: The east is Fernie Ridge, to the southeast is Morrissey Ridge and to the southwest are the various peaks of the Lizard Range . Fernie gives the name to the Jurassic -Age Fernie Formation . The Lizard Range is home to Fernie Alpine Resort , one of the largest ski resorts in Canada, and Island Lake Catskiing , a resort. While the slopes of the mountains are the present focus of economic activity, until comparatively recently residents of
744-495: The erosion of newly uplifted mountains to the west. The sediments were transported eastward by river systems and deposited in a variety of fluvial channel , floodplain , swamp , coastal plain and deltaic environments along the western edge of the Western Interior Seaway . The Mist Mountain Formation is present in the front ranges and foothills of the southern and central Canadian Rockies . It extends from
775-431: The seams, especially in the cores of folds and flexures. A seam was thickened to 25 metres (80 ft) in the core of an anticline at Grassy Mountain near Blairmore, Alberta , and extreme thickening to 120 metres (390 ft) occurred in a faulted syncline at Corbin, British Columbia . Mist Mountain coal generally has a low sulphur content and coal rank typically ranges from high- to medium-volatile bituminous in
806-635: The south, and from low-volatile bituminous to semi-anthracite in the north. As of 2019, it is being produced from large open-pit mines near Sparwood and Elkford, British Columbia , and the majority of it is exported to international markets for use as coking coal . Mist Mountain coal was formerly mined in British Columbia near Fernie , Hosmer , and Corbin; at several locations in the Crowsnest Pass area of Alberta; and at Canmore , Alberta, in many cases by underground mining methods. Siltstone Siltstone , also known as aleurolite ,
837-735: The team back to the Fernie Memorial Arena. The following people were born, raised in or reside in Fernie: Rogers Communications operates a cable system serving Fernie. The cable system offers most major channels from Vancouver and Calgary , as well as local programming on Rogers TV channel 10. School District 5 Southeast Kootenay operates the following public schools in Fernie: The Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique operates one Francophone school: école Sophie-Morigeau primary school. Private schools: Post-secondary: In
868-541: The transporting medium (air or water) and accumulate on the surface. They are found in turbidite sequences, in deltas, in glacial deposits, and in miogeosynclinal settings. Fernie, British Columbia Fernie is a city in the Elk Valley area of the East Kootenay region of southeastern British Columbia , Canada, located on BC Highway 3 on the western approaches to the Crowsnest Pass through
899-486: The twentieth century, generally tied to the global price of coal. The mines at Coal Creek closed permanently by 1960 and the focus of mining activity shifted to Michel and Natal about twenty-five kilometres (16 miles) upriver, which sat on a more productive portion of the Crowsnest Coal Field. Kaiser Resources opened immense open-pit mines there in the 1970s to meet new metallurgical coal contracts for
930-502: Was laid out in the crook of a doglegged glacial valley that today is drained by the Elk River . Three tributaries of the Elk— Coal , Lizard , and Fairy Creeks—rise in its side valleys and join the Elk either within or in close proximity to the townsite. To the north of the city lie Mount Fernie , Mount Klauer, The Three Sisters and Mount Proctor . To the northeast is Mount Hosmer , to
961-419: Was prized in ancient Egypt for manufacturing statuary and cosmetic palettes . The siltstone quarried at Wadi Hammamat was a hard, fine-grained siltstone that resisted flaking and was almost ideal for such uses. There is not complete agreement on the definition of siltstone. One definition is that siltstone is mudrock ( clastic sedimentary rock containing at least 50% clay and silt) in which at least 2/3 of