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The Hamilton family was moved from Lethbridge, to a small house alongside the Old Man River, near by. And the Kerr family from their police-barrack home on the Police Flats, to a newly-built house, near the mine office. A small settlement grew up as the other workers obtained homes, and of course a bunkhouse, boarding house and a stable were quickly added. A C.P.R. spur track had to be built into this mine, a tipple built, and two bridges across the Old Man River — one for the railway spur track and one for the road. There was no nearby station. Bills of lading were carried on horseback to the Hillcrest Station, sometimes by a six year old girl. A townsite was laid out on a level bench of land about a mile north. There Bill Kerr built his grocery store, and there followed in time a butcher shop, bake shop, pool hall, post office in the store, and in the fall of 1910, Rev. Lang's Church, a hotel, and a one room school house. A teacher, Miss Dennis, came from Nanton. And the budding town was named by Mrs. Hamilton as Passburg — The burg of the Pass.

Though there was no church until the fall of 1910, a student missionary by the name of White, was sent out by the Presbyterian church in the summer time. He lived in the Hamilton children's well-built playhouse and held services in the company boarding house, as well as places he rode to up and down the valley. A Catholic priest from Frank, held regular mass, summer and winter in the Hamilton home.

Early in its history there was a major threat of catastrophe for the Byron Creek community. A forest fire! Everyone fought it but the beautiful and heavily treed Bryon Creek canyon and all the adjacent hillsides were blackened. It roared through relentlessly and only day and night battle saved the mine buildings and all the homes. The present trees on those slopes have all grown up since that time but the canyon has not been able to regain the tall cathedral-like forest so beautiful to walk through. The women set up food stations and did all supportive work possible, which meant that even babies and very young children were taken within viewing distance and had a ringside seat for watching the horror. Katherine Hamilton, only a toddler at the time, could not erase the memory, and some years later when there was a national competition for a forest fire story, and put it on paper, and won the competition. There was a sulphur spring in the canyon and some time before the fire William Hamilton built a small bath house, equipped with stove and tub, there. His wife's two nieces, the Duncan girls, came all the way from Estevan, Saskatchewan to drink the water and take hot baths, and claim their rheumatism not only went away, but has never returned to this day. The bath house, of course, was burned down, never to be rebuilt.

The Frank slide had taken place in April 1903. This tremendous volume of rock blocked the valley from side to side. It was a terrific impediment to all traffic up and down the valley. When William Hamilton would be coming home by train from the East, he would throw his club bag off to his waiting daughter Jessie, as the train passed their house, and he would get off the train when it was forced to a snail's pace while crossing the Frank Slide. He would then walk the very considerable distance back along the track to Passburg.

This article is extracted from Crowsnest and its People: Millennium Edition (Coleman, Alberta, Crowsnest Pass Historical Society, 2000.) The Heritage Community Foundation and the Year of the Coal Miner Consortium would like to thank the authors and the Crowsnest Pass Historical Society for permission to reprint this material.

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