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Peter Fidler first discovered coal in Alberta in 1792. Nicholas Sheran, an Irish Roman Catholic from New York, however, developed the first commercial coal enterprise in southern Alberta. Following the Civil War in the United States, Sheran, a veteran, travelled to Fort Benton where he met the Healy Brothers. The trio went to southern Alberta where they found outcroppings of coal at the junction of the Oldman and St. Mary’s Rivers. In 1872 Sheran moved farther down the Oldman River and began to freight his coal to Fort Benton, and later, Forts Walsh and Macleod. Sadly, Sheran died in a drowning accident in 1882. Sheran’s fledgling coal industry brought the Galt family to southern Alberta. In later years, the Galt fortune included railway building and irrigation. Elliot T. Galt travelled through southern Alberta in 1879 as an assistant to the Indian Commissioner, Edgar Dewdney. He reported to Dewdney and his father, Sir Alexander Galt of Montreal, of coal along the Oldman River. His father quickly organised the North-Western Coal and Navigation Company. Elliot became the company’s manager and William Lethbridge became its first president. After deciding that the Lethbridge area would be the best area for coal mining, the company opened its mines on 11 December 1882. The Galt coal mines served the needs of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which offered the North-Western Coal and Navigation Company a large long-term contract if the latter would build a railway to deliver coal to Dunmore. In the 1890s, the Galts looked towards Montana as a potential market and their subsidiary company built a railway from Lethbridge to Great Falls. |
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