Mercoal, Alberta facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Mercoal
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Mercoal, shortly after mine closure, Spring 1960
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 Mercoal
Location in Yellowhead County
Mercoal
Location in Alberta
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| Country | Canada |
| Province | Alberta |
| Municipal district | Yellowhead County |
| Government | |
| • Type | Unincorporated |
| Time zone | UTC−7 (MST) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC−6 (MDT) |
| Area code(s) | 780, 587, 825 |
Mercoal is a place in western Alberta, Canada. It used to be a busy town where people mined coal. Today, it's mostly a ghost town, meaning most people have moved away. You can find Mercoal in Yellowhead County. It's located on Highway 40, about 70 kilometers southwest of Edson.
Mercoal was once part of a group of towns along the old Grand Trunk Pacific Railway. This railway line was called the Coal Branch. Other towns on this line included Robb and Cadomin. At its busiest, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Mercoal had over 800 people living there. The town became much smaller after the coal mines closed in 1959. Now, only a few summer homes remain.
History of Mercoal
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The name Mercoal comes from the company that started the town: the McLeod River Hard Coal Company. Nick Gurvich was a co-owner of this company. He opened an underground coal mine here in 1920. This means miners dug tunnels deep into the ground to get the coal.
In 1924, the mine was sold to a new company called Saunders Ridge Coal Company, Ltd. The Mercoal mine was the last big coal mine operating in the Coal Branch area. When other mines closed, like the ones in Mountain Park in 1950 and Cadomin in 1952, many workers moved to Mercoal to find jobs. However, the Mercoal mine eventually closed too, on July 17, 1959.
