Anthracite, Alberta had grown to 300 and most of the town's residents originated from the eastern United States. It consisted of one general store, one hardware store, one hotel, one pool hall, one restaurant and a barber shop. Anthracite became a hotspot for illegal activities; prostitution and the illegal consumption of alcohol were commonplace The local Justice of the Peace brought the most popular brothel owner in Anthracite before a court and fined her the then-extraordinary amount of $200 for liquor sale violations. After much bad luck during the local mine's operation, the Canadian Anthracite Coal Company closed the mine in 1890.
Anthracite iron States, in the principal control and supervision of Ironmaster David Thomas who had begun experimenting with attempts to use locally available Wales anthracite deposits as early as 1820 soon after he became in charge at Yniscedewin Iron Works in Wales. About this 1837-38 timeframe experiments were also being made in Pennsylvania near Port Carbon, and in Mauch Chunk, but with overall better success than in Wales. White, Hazard and the LC&N Co. had begun systematic experiments to smelt using anthracite in two furnaces in Mauch Chunk in 1832-1837 with intermittent but sporadically improved successes using cold blast processes with two