Atlas Mine Monarch Mine Newcastle Mine Rosedale Mine Star Mine

The mine was registered by James Francis Melville Moodie or as he was commonly called J. F. Moodie or Frank Moodie in 1911. J. F. Moodie had prospected the area for several years in search of what he considered the best possible mine site.

On July 19, 1913, Andrew N. Scott, District Inspector of Mines in his report stated that this mine with its two workable seams (top one of 4 feet with the lower one 85 feet below, of 9 feet in thickness) made it one of the most valuable and reliable properties in the domestic coal field in the province

By 1918 when the First World War had ended, labour and union problems appeared on the scene. The OBU (One Big Union) and the UMWA (United Mine Workers of America) were at loggerheads to unionize the miners. The Alberta Coal Mining Industry Commission of 1919 had hearings throughout the province as well as in the Valley with recommendations.

One deciding factor occurred on Saturday, August 9, 1919 when a group of war veterans employed at the Rosedale Mine went quietly into Drumheller and seized 5 or 6 of the One Big Union leaders and took them out of town and faced them on separate trails and told them to keep going. That was the end of the OBU influence in the Valley as on October 11, 1919, the Red Deer Valley Coal Operators Association secured an injunction against the OBU that prevented them or their officials from entering the Drumheller Coal fields or with interfering with the miners in any way.

By 1920 J. F. Moodie had left the scene, as shareholders who bought into the company eventually took over control of the company. Moodie. turned to oil where he pioneered the border oil fields of southern Alberta before turning to the Sentinel Well in Turner Valley. His oil career ended in a car accident in 1938. He lived till 1943 and was 65 years of age.

This article is extracted from Ernest Hlady, The Valley of the Dinosaurs : Its Families and Coal Mines (East Coulee, Alberta, East Coulee Community Association, 1988). The Heritage Community Foundation and the Year of the Coal Miner Consortium would like to thank Ernest Hlady and the East Coulee Community Association for permission to reprint this material.