From coal seam to Quarry Lake —
and why it all connects
The Staircase Lands and Quarry Lake share the same geology, the same mining history, and the same community struggle. Understanding that history makes the current proposal impossible to view in isolation.
Canmore is built on coal — and the Staircase Lands are its foundation
Canmore was established in 1883 as a Canadian Pacific Railway depot, but it was coal that turned the whistle stop into a town. The Canadian Anthracite Coal Company (CACC) opened Mine No. 1 in 1886–1887 along what was then called Whiteman's Creek (now Canmore Creek) — directly below what is today the Staircase Lands. The semi-anthracite coal found in the Cascade Coal Basin was exceptionally rare in North America at the time, burning hot and clean, making it ideal fuel for CPR steam locomotives.
The No. 1 Mine transformed Canmore. By the time it closed in 1916, the mine had established the town's infrastructure, economy, and identity. The hillside above it — the Staircase Lands — was left shaped by that extraction: terraced, disturbed, and laced with the beginnings of what would become a complex network of underground workings reaching deep under the valley.
The developer himself acknowledged this heritage — the Trailhaus was originally named "Miners Camp" to "play on the historic nature of the property." The irony is that the very mining history being invoked for branding is the same history that raises legitimate geotechnical and undermining concerns.
90 years of mining ends on Black Friday — and leaves a scarred landscape
In 1938, Canmore's two rival coal companies merged into Canmore Mines Ltd., which operated eight underground mines and eventually opened a series of surface (open-pit) operations along the south side of the Bow River. In 1968 alone, Canmore Mines stripped 63,000 tons of coal from five surface pits, including Canmore Creek Mine No. 3 — a 120-foot-deep, 365-metre-long pit that would later become Quarry Lake. The underground workings beneath the Staircase Lands multiplied across multiple seams: some steeply dipping, some faulted, all of them leaving behind voids, pillar remnants, and subsurface instability that persists today.
On July 13, 1979 — known locally as "Black Friday" — the Canmore mines closed after 90 years of operations. The town's economic future looked bleak. The hillsides were scarred. The creek beds were disturbed. And beneath the ground, more than 3,000 kilometres of underground roadways and tunnels lay abandoned under the western slopes.
The mine seams beneath the Staircase Lands include the Stewart, Sedlock, and Carey seams — some of the steepest and most faulted in the entire operation. A 3-D analysis by Canmore filmmaker Jerry Auld shows sinkholes from these seams can propagate well beyond their original footprint.
A community reclaims a mine pit — and Quarry Lake is born
As the mines wound down in the early 1970s, Canmore Mines Ltd. chief engineer Gerry Stephenson — an avid fly fisherman — was given the task of reclaiming Canmore Creek Mine No. 3. Rather than simply backfilling the pit, Stephenson and his crew partially backfilled the 120-foot-deep pit, sealed the outlet with a clay plug, and allowed the water level to rise to create a fishing hole. The design included both deep and shallow areas for fish, insects, and plants.
Reclamation concluded in 1980 when the Town of Canmore took ownership. The site was officially named Quarry Lake in 1982. Alberta's Environment Conservation Authority called it the best mine reclamation in Western Canada. When the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics arrived — with Nordic events held at the Canmore Nordic Centre, itself built on reclaimed mine land — the Town invested further in trails, picnic areas, and beach facilities at Quarry Lake.
The transformation of an industrial eyesore into a beloved community park was a landmark achievement, the result of the vision of a few engineers and the sustained commitment of an entire community. Philanthropist Stan Milner and the Rocky Mountain Heritage Foundation later helped the Town purchase the land from the province outright, permanently protecting it as the centrepiece of the 293-acre Quarry Lake Heritage Park.
Quarry Lake and the Staircase Lands share the same watershed. The creek that fed Mine No. 3 still flows through the Staircase Lands. What drains from the Staircase Lands flows, eventually, into the lake that took a generation to restore.
The Bow Valley becomes the first place in North America to legally protect wildlife corridors
The 1988 Olympics put Canmore on the map as a destination — and triggered a wave of development pressure that forced the community to ask hard questions about what it wanted to protect. In 1992, the Natural Resources Conservation Board (NRCB) ruled that any development on the Three Sisters lands must integrate designated wildlife corridors. It was a landmark decision that acknowledged the Bow Valley's unique role as the critical link in a wildlife network stretching from Yellowstone to Yukon.
In 1998, the Bow Corridor Ecosystem Advisory Group (BCEAG) — a partnership of the Government of Alberta, the Town of Canmore, Banff National Park, and the Municipal District of Bighorn — published the Wildlife Corridor and Habitat Patch Guidelines for the Bow Valley, the first formal wildlife corridor guidelines in North America. These guidelines became a legal requirement in Canmore's development approval process and established science-based standards for corridor width, design, and management. In 1999 they received a Premier's Award of Excellence.
The Staircase Lands sit squarely within the corridor these guidelines were designed to protect — the movement route linking Banff National Park to Kananaskis Country via the Quarry Lake and Grassi Lakes habitat patches.
Research by wildlife ecologist Dr. Adam Ford shows most large wildlife in this area spend 95% of their time on slopes under 20 degrees — precisely the valley-bottom terrain the Staircase Lands occupy. This is not marginal habitat. It is the functional heart of the corridor.
The land changes hands — and the courts weigh in
The geotechnical risks of developing on undermined land in Canmore are not theoretical. In 2010, an old mine shaft collapsed on the Dyrgas Gate public trail on Three Sisters lands, at significant cost to Alberta taxpayers. The Canmore Commons notes that when developers have previously declared bankruptcy on these lands — which has happened three times, most recently in 2008 — local and provincial taxpayers are left financially exposed by any accidents on the property.
Three Sisters Mountain Village Properties Limited (TSMVPL) purchased the Staircase Lands in 2013. The Town's 1999 and subsequent land use bylaws had designated portions of the lands as Natural Park District, with permitted uses limited to open space, trail, wildlife habitat patch, and wildlife corridor.
In July 2022, the Court of Queen's Bench ordered the Town to either purchase the upper triangular portion of the Staircase Lands or redesignate its use — finding that successive changes to the land use bylaw had effectively restricted the private landowner's development rights. The Town made an offer to purchase the land, but TSMVPL declined. The Staircase Lands were subsequently sold to Prospector Canada LLC, a group of developers and investors based in Colorado. Zachary Richardson — son of TSMVPL owner Blair Richardson — is listed as a managing partner and project developer with Prospector on LinkedIn, and is the landowner behind The Trailhaus proposal.
Gerry Stephenson — the engineer who created Quarry Lake and who spent decades studying the Canmore mine workings — was consistently and explicitly opposed to permanent structures on undermined Staircase Lands until his death in 2019. His professional opinion was cited dozens of times in public hearings. It has not been superseded.
The same battle, the same land, a new proposal
Development Permit Application PL20250514 proposes a 74-unit commercial glamping campground on almost 10 hectares of the Staircase Lands — the same parcel above Mine No. 1, immediately adjacent to an important wildlife corridor and habitat patch, and located within the same drainage/watershed system as the Quarry Lake area that a generation of engineers and community advocates spent decades restoring.
The developer notes the land has "sat idle for 60 years" — but that is not inertia. It reflects a long community consensus that this land is not suitable for high-intensity development: not because of sentiment, but because of geology, ecology, hydrology, and fire risk that are documented, contested, and unresolved.
Quarry Lake was not inevitable. It took a visionary engineer, a committed community, a philanthropist, and decades of sustained effort to transform an open-pit mine into one of the most loved places in Canmore. That legacy deserves better than to have its watershed placed under additional seasonal visitor pressure and its nearby wildlife corridor further stressed by a commercial campground.
The Staircase Lands should complete the story that Quarry Lake started — not undo it. The community vision of open space, trail connectivity, and wildlife habitat on these lands is consistent with the Municipal Development Plan, the wildlife corridor guidelines, and the legacy of responsible stewardship that defines Canmore at its best.