The Ghosts of Crowsnest Pass

8/22/2024

At 4:10 a.m. on April 29, 1903 the inhabitants of Frank a small bootlegging and mining camp at Crow's Nest Pass heard a distant roar. The town sat at the base of Turtle Mountain in the southwestern corner of the District of Alberta, Canada. Little did they know that within less than two minutes, a landslide brought down over 80 million tons of debris that obliterated the eastern end of the town, including many inhabitants that have remained entombed until this day.

Frank after the landslide c.1903

Ninety person lost their lives, and only eighteen had their remains recovered because they were buried under shallow debris. Most of the bodies were inaccessible due to the immense weight of the rubble. Although the site was nothing more than boulders and rocks, below the surface lay the remains of the unfortunate ones, and above the surface their unsettled spirits continue to roam. It is not surprising that this area has a reputation of being very haunted.

Spirits are said to be wandering the debris field, searching for their lost friends and loved ones. Some visitors have reported feeling uncomfortable in the area, followed by cries in the wind and unexplained lantern lights traversing the boulders at night. How many souls have remained, who they are, and why they stay is a complete mystery.

However sudden and violent death would visit Frank again only within a scant few years. Like many mining frontier towns, Frank had a thriving tenderloin area where prostitutes plied their trade. Many men came pursuing a job in the mines, some of them were very violent, and others were downright criminals.

After killing his Montie Lewis in 1907, Mike Phillips would kill his own wife in 1912.

It was a man like this that crossed paths with a local madam named Montie (Monty) Lewis. On a cold November night in 1907, a constable was looking for a man known as Mike Phillips. He went to all the brothels in Frank, and when he arrived at Montie's house all the light were out. He went to a side door, knocked several times, the doors were locked and he left. He came back two hours later, and the lights were on inside, and he found a side door open.

Searching through the house he found it was empty except for something that lay across the bed in one of the rooms. When he drew back a bloodied quilt he found Montie lying on her bed dressed only in a wrapper and stockings. Her throat had been slit, her head hacked and stabbed, and she had several wounds above her eyes. She had also been stabbed in the chest, and she had defensive wounds on her hands and forearms.

The constable went and got the local police sergeant who came with the coroner, and they proceeded to search the property. They found a long carving knife and a hatchet covered in blood under the kitchen table. These items were later identified by the cook as ones he used when preparing meals. The remains of lunch were still there, and the bedroom was strewn with clothing that had been pulled from the bureau and a nearby trunk.

A doctor later determined that her death had been caused by a skull fracture inflicted during the attack.

Phillips who was the main suspect had anglicized his real name, which was Maxim Pylypczuk. He had immigrated from Galicia, Ukraine.

Montie was doing well in the flesh trade, and was having a new house built. She had left California to relocate to Frank. Two painters working on it, would go on to give testimony they had seen Mike Phillips at the house the day of the murder, as well as two days previous to that. Other miners which had visited Montie's brothel had also seen Mike Phillips there.

Frankie Harris (Hantys), a prostitute who had been staying there until only three days before the murder, told the court how she had seen Mike Phillips as well as Mr. Green coming to the house to visit Montie. Green though had a solid alibi as he was placed by others on a bridge chain gang, and was working in a coal chute when the murder was committed. Frankie also said she knew that Montie had $200 on her. The local banker confirmed the deposit was never made. Montie was known for her love of extravagant jewelry, and it was left untouched.

Phillips had just been paid $103 in wages, which many believed he would have spent at Montie's brothel after spending 3 days there, but all of Montie's money was gone.

Mr. Moody a timekeeper at the mine testified that Phillips had not been dismissed, and had just stopped coming to work.

Maxim Pylypczuk a.k.a Mike Phillips escaped justice by being acquitted of killing Montie Lewis and then by escaping after killing his wife c.1912

On January 30, 1908 the police eventually caught up with Mike Phillips in Pakan, where his wife and her family lived on their farm. He had arrived on December 19, claiming he had to walk back after being robbed in MacLeod, and he had no money left.

He was arrested and went to trial in May, 1908. The most damaging testimony came from Montie's cook Mah Sing who was originally the main suspect. He said that Mike Phillips had been staying at the house for two days previous to the murder.

Mike Phillips desperate for a character reference even sent for his father-in-law, John Oreczuk who was a Galician himself, and who traveled from Pakan, Canada. Phillips had married his daughter only a year before, but had only sent her $14 from his earning the entire time. Little did Oreczuk understand the true nature of the man he vouched for.

Despite all the evidence and testimony on May 11, 1908 the jury acquitted Phillips, based on the doubt created by the defense attorney that the victim's lifestyle allowed access to other men who could have committed the crime. Too bad for Mrs. Phillips that her husband was acquitted, because by 1912 a reward of $200 was being offered for his capture. He had killed her on March, 12 of that same year by putting three bullets in her right breast after a drunken brawl.

Phillips was described as "cunning" by the mounted police, who suspected he probably traveled at night using the cover of darkness. The death of Montie Lewis in 1907, was featured in the stories about him, reminding readers that perhaps the murder of his wife had not been his first.

He was 29 year old, measured 5'7", weighed 150 pounds, had dark complexion, brown hair and eyes, a scar on his right cheekbone and a scar on his left thigh. He was missing the big toe of his right foot. He was known as a heavy drinker who frequented saloons.

Police believed he was still close to the murder scene, which was 60 miles northwest of Edmonton since he was on foot. They suspected he was being given food by some of his countrymen.

What became of Mike Phillips is lost to history since there is no mention of his capture, however Montie’s spirit is believed to still wander through the town, bemoaning her early death and luring lost hikers away from the safety of the trails. Crow's Nest Pass' long and sometimes dark history yields stories of spirits and hauntings. The residents continue the tradition of recounting the tales to visitors who dare to ask.

North Saskatchewan River

THE LOST MINE

There is another mystery that predates the landslide at Frank and the murder of Montie Lewis.

In 1870, prospectors from Montana came to pan for gold in the North Saskatchewan River. Two of the men were named Blackjack and Lemon. Nothing came of the project, and they made plans to return to Tobacco Plains, Montana. In order to protect themselves from attacks by the Blackfoot, they joined a group of half-breeds heading for Fort Standoff. From that point on they went their own way, and followed an old Indian trail up High River into the mountains.

The exact pack trail they followed is not known, but eventually they came to the Elk River Valley and panned at a confluence of 3 separate streams. They found the riverbed was full of gold, and a rock ledge was streaked with solid gold.

At the end of the day both men argued over whether they should stay and mine, or return in the spring. They almost came to blows, but it wouldn't be the first time gold caused bad blood between friends. Later that night Lemon split Blackjack's head with an ax while he slept.

That night Lemon started to hear ghostly moaning, which he feared was Blackjack's ghost who had returned for revenge. Lemon's sanity, which perhaps wasn't the best before that day, took a serious turn for the worse after he became a murderer.

What he didn't know was that two Stoney braves, William and Daniel Bendow were making the ghostly cries from behind a bush where they were hiding.

Lemon who had not shut his eyes all night long, left the camp bound for Tobacco Plains at the first sign of dawn. The Bendow brothers raided the camp and took all the valuables. They headed to their village at Morley, Alberta, and told their chief about the discovery of the gold, and Blackjack's murder. Wary of what would happen if word got out about gold being found, the chief swore both of them to secrecy.

Tobacco Plains once had a small Jesuit mission, but it had closed by the 1860s. The only religious center, Jocko Mission (St. Ignatius) was found south of Flathead Lake in Montana. Upon arriving there Lemon visited a priest and confessed his crime. He showed the priest samples of the gold they discovered, which left no doubt he was speaking the truth.

Indian Encampment Tobacco Plains Kootenay c.1860

The priest sent out John McDougall, a Metis to Lemon's mine. The camp was found and he buried Blackjack, leaving a cairn to mark the man's resting place. Once he left, men from the Morley village who had kept a vigil over the site destroyed the cairn, and any evidence of the men's presence there.

Soon enough others heard of Lemon's discovery, and convinced him to take them to the location. However Lemon's sanity was fragile, and he was unable to return to the site. His companions didn't want to believe he didn't remember. When they confronted him he became violent and was taken back to Tobacco Plains, where he went to live on his brother's ranch until his death.

In 1872, the priest outfitted a party of miners. They left for Crowsnest Lake to wait for John McDougall, who had buried Blackjack two years before. McDougall planned to meet the party, but first stopped at Fort Kipp, a whiskey fort in Southwest Alberta. He drank himself to death that night from the rotgut whiskey known to be served there. The location of the mine went with him, and the expedition was cancelled.

In 1883, the priest put together another mining party, but this time a forest fire that had charred the area earlier in the year, made the terrain unreachable and they returned to Tobacco Plains.

The priest might not have been lucky, but he was persistent and in 1884 he sent out another party, this one led by Lemon. However the closer he got to the location the more deranged he became. The expedition was forced to turn back.

A man named Nelson who had panned with Blackjack and Lemon on the North Saskatchewan, led another trip which ended in failure.

Frontier ranch eastern Montana c.1900

The next to organize a search was Lafayette French, a buffalo hunter and Indian trader who hailed from Pennsylvania. On the first leg of the trip he contracted a serious illness that made him very sick, and waylaid him from completing the expedition.

He spent the next 30 year searching for the Lost Lemon Mine. He even enlisted help from members of the expedition organized by the priest, and members of the tribe who had escorted Lemon and Blackjack to the old Indian trail.

French came to believe there was some type of curse that would strike any who came looking for the gold, especially if they came close to finding it.

What convinced him of this was when a group of Stony Indians led by William Bendow, took shelter on a ranch near Picher Creek, owned by William Samuel Lee, a friend of Lafayette French.

French was coincidentally visiting at the ranch, and gave the group some food. When French asked Bendow about the mine, the Indians refused to talk about it. A few months later French told Bendow he would give 25 horses and 25 cattle to the Stoney tribe, on the condition he would be guided to the lost Lemon Mine. Bendow said yes, but later changed his mind convinced by superstition that something bad would happen.

In the winter of 1912, Bendow once again agreed to take French to the mine. George Emerson, a rancher and fur trader would accompany the group, however Bendow mysteriously died enroute to the meeting point.

A map of the Elk River Valley and the Livingstone Range.

The Stoney tribe (Nakoda Nation) believed that Bendow's death was the result of bad medicine after he agreed to reveal the tribe's secret.

Bendow's companions brought his body back to Morley in a cart. On the night of their return, Bendow's son-in-law died just as mysteriously.

Undeterred by the men's death, French decided to continue with the expedition, which had been outfitted by Senator Riley. On that trip he didn't discover the mine but found something unusual since he wrote a cryptic letter to a friend at Fort Benton, when he stopped at the Bar U Ranch in the Albert foothills. He mentioned something about locating "it". From there he headed west and stopped at his cabin about 2 miles from the Bedingfield Ranch in High River.

The cabin mysteriously caught fire that night, and French was badly burned. He crawled two miles in the snow to the Bedingfield Ranch for help

He managed to get himself into one of the beds in the bunkhouse, which was empty since the cowboy's had left for the day's work.

The cowhands did not discover French until they returned at the end of the day. They took him to the nearest hospital in High River. He was in bad condition and asked to see Senator Riley supposedly to tell him about the location of the Lemon mine, however he died before he could talk to Riley.

Jean L’Heureux with three Blackfoot Confederacy chiefs c.1880 (Source - Glenbow Archives, NA-2968-4).

HISTORY VS. MYTH OF THE LEMON MINE

According to author Jack Demsey, Lemon's Christian name was varied but never exact, except that he probably spelled his last name as "Lemmon". Blackjack did have a real reputation in those years as a prospector, who was involved in the discovery of gold in the Cariboo mines in British Columbia. His real name was Nehemia T. Smith, born in Maryland, and he was involved in the Fraser River Gold Rush in 1858. At that time he partnered with Thomas Latham who went by the name of "Dancing Bill." In 1862 Blackjack made the famous strike on William Creek.

This is where myth diverts from reality, because Blackjack was still alive in 1883, an old man and a patient at Victoria Hospital. This was 13 years after he was supposedly killed by Lemmon in the argument of whether to stay or leave.

There has always been a dispute if there is gold in the foothills in Alberta, but throughout the late 19th century there were reports of gold being found there.

In 1882, a cow grazing in the Porcupine Hills was butchered, and $8,00 in coarse gold was found in its stomach.

In those years, a certain Father LeRoux was said to be living at the Jocko Mission close to Tobacco Plains, but according to Jesuit records which were usually precise, no priest by this name served at St. Ignatius or at the earlier mission.

However among the Blackfoot there was a man named Jean L'Heureux (Larue) (1837-1919), a French Canadian who once attended a Catholic seminary in Montreal. According to the Oblate priests he was expelled because he was caught as either being a thief or as a homosexual.

He fled to the Montana gold fields where he passed himself off as a priest. In the summer of 1861 he was staying at the St. Albert mission north Ft. Edmonton, but was caught in the act of sodomy. The priests handed him off to a band of Blackfoot who had come to trade, and he left for Montana with them. Even though he had never received holy orders he used a cassock, and told the Indians he was part of the Oblates order.

In Montana he passed himself off to the Jesuits as a secular priest.

In 1862, L'Heureux returned to St. Albert claiming he had built a church for the Jesuits at Chief Mountain. Father Lacombe, an Oblate said, "It appears that he has deceived the Jesuit fathers even better than he has me."

L'Heureux performed baptisms and marriages among the Blackfoot, and he travelled with them and served as their interpreter. He took the Blackfoot name of Nio’kskatapi, or Three Persons, after the Holy Trinity. One of the reasons he also stayed with the Blackfoot is that he did not have to hide his homosexuality.

This society was tolerant of berdaches, a fact attested to by the trader Jean-Baptiste Trudeau (1748-1827), using contemporary vocabulary in his account of his voyage along the upper Missouri River, Voyage sur le Haut-Missouri : 1794-1796:

[Translation] Among all the savage peoples of this continent, there are men who wear women’s dress, who never take part in war or the hunt, who do women’s work, and who make use of both sexes. I could not truthfully tell you what has caused these hermaphrodite-like men to assume this condition, whether it be due to some fanciful idea or an abominable, disturbed passion, as these barbarians have an unfortunate penchant for sodomy.

Jean L’Heureux in a cassock with a group of Blackfoot, Blood and Peigan Indians. Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, c.1871 (Source - Glenbow Archives, NA-575-1).

L’Heureux’s first concern appeared to be the Indians throughout the years he lived with them. Many times he sought medical help for them when they were stricken with disease, or were starving. He also served as interpreter during treaty negotiations.

He was relieved of his duties in 1891, and found himself utterly destitute. He was known to be demanding, obsessive and eccentric and he eventually came to Father Lacombe for help. Even though he was in his seventies he set off with a bundle for the foothills of the Rockies, and lived as a recluse or with the Metis. Poor and crippled, he survived on the rations of beef and flour that the government granted him for “services rendered.”

In 1912, L’Heureux had to be placed in a home run by Father Lacombe in Midnapore. By then he was quite elderly, but he still wore the cassock and the clerical collar, and insisted on being called “Reverend.” He died in 1919, having almost reached the age of 90.

It's believed that L'Heurex perpetrated the hoax of Lemon's Lost mine based on the following story told by Lt. James Bradley:

In the summer of 1862, a package of sand was received by Dawson (a trader at Fort Benton) from a certain Larue, a pretended priest, who had been living for several years among the Bloods and Blackfeet. Larue sent word with the package that it was gold bearing sand, taken from a gulch in the north, and he would guide a party to the locality if desired.

The sand was washed at the Fort and was found to contain an astonishing proportion of gold. A party was instantly formed ... which proceeded north in July to prospect. The party pursued a northwesterly course, prospecting upon every stream from the Marias to the Willows, a point about 25 miles south of Fort Edmonton getting a light color of gold upon every stream, but nothing to justify working.

Larue could not be found and the unsuccessful prospectors, after passing the summer in the fruitless search, concluded that they had been victimized by the faithless Larue and turned their faces homeward, arriving at Fort Benton in September in such a state of mind that they would have executed summary vengeance on Larue had he fallen into their hands. It is the present belief (in the 1870s) of Mr. Arnous, shared by others of his associates, that Larue had purposely deceived them by mixing a large quantity of gold dust with the sand and representing the mixture as a fair specimen of the rich fields known to him.

St. Ignatius Mission, Montana

The similarity to the Larue of the story to L'Heureux is more than coincidental, as well as the legends that names a Father LaRoux as the one who sent out various search parties for the Lost Lemon mine.

Also the two Stoney Indians, William and Daniel Bendow are never mentioned in any of the 1877 treaty lists. Stoneys that were asked about the surname said they had never heard of it. Perhaps "Bendow" might have been "Bigman" which had two members with this name in 1870.

In a version reported in 1868, Frank Lemmon traveled with his partner Old George, and they found gold on the west side of the Rockies. Lemmon had two stories as to what happened to his partner. In one he was shot by the Blackfeet, in the other story he shot Old George because of a quarrel. The body was found and buried in 1884 or 1885.

Lemmon went to the Jocko Mission, but didn't claim he had discovered a fabulous vein or "mother lode" but that he "got as high as $15 or $20 to the pan in a gulch."

Two years later Lemmon was able to get a group together and return to the area, which was about 120 miles north of Flathead Lake. He led the men through a fruitless course through rough terrain, until the men realized that Lemmon was lost. The party also suffered the loss of their equipment due to a fire, and returned without finding anything. Lemmon was last reported upon in 1886, when he joined the gold rush to the Sweetgrass Hills.

Why would Lemmon do this, is tied to funding. All one had to do was claim to know where gold could found, and a party would be formed where he didn't have to pay for the equipment, just to act as a guide.

So it seems the legend of the Lost Lemon Mines is based more in myth than reality; most of it made up by a laicized priest named Jean L'Heureux.