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BURMIS, ALBERTA TO ELKO, BRITISH 

 COLUMBIA. 



BY 



W. W. Leach. 



INTRODUCTION. 



The territory lying between Burmis, Alberta and Elko, 

 British Columbia, includes all the coal fields, containing 

 high-grade bituminous coal of Kootenay age in the Crows- 

 nest Pass, which are traversed by the Crowsnest branch 

 of the Canadian Pacific railway. 



These fields may be broadly divided into two groups, 

 the most easterly lying in the province of Alberta and 

 separated from the westerly or British Columbia group 

 by the main range of the Rocky mountains. Each of 

 these groups consists of a number of separate areas of 

 coal-bearing beds. 



On the Alberta side of the mountains the various coal 

 areas are divided by a series of great faults, following 

 closely the strike of the strata, while the individual areas 

 have been subjected to severe folding and some minor 

 faulting. On the other hand, the British Columbia 

 group is composed of a number of more or less regular 

 basins, the most important of which has a length of some 

 35 miles (56-3 km.) with a maximum width of 11 miles 

 (17-7 km.). _ 



The coal is contained in rocks of Kootenay age (Lower 

 Cretaceous) consisting of hard, grey sandstones, grey, 

 black, and carbonaceous shales with, towards the top, 

 some hard siliceous conglomerate holding many chert 

 pebbles. In the Alberta group the Kootenay rocks have 

 a total thickness of not more than 700 feet (213 m.) con- 

 taining from 5 to 6 seams of coal with an aggregate thickness 

 of about 50 feet (15-2 m.) [8], while a section measured 

 near Morrissey, on the British Columbia side of the Pass, 

 showed 3,200 feet (975 m.) of Kootenay rocks with 216 

 feet (62-7 m.) of coal contained in seams of over i foot 

 (•3 m.) in thickness [2]. Similarly the Fernie shales, of 

 Jurassic age, underlying the Kootenay are very much 

 thinner in Alberta than in British Columbia, in the former 



