The pits and waste piles on Piitaisaikis Ridge north of Bellevue comprise the most extensive pre-historic chert quarry in the Canadian Rockies.
That’s the consensus after successive archaelogical digs in the 1970s by Bea Loveseth and Barney Reeves and, in the 1980s, by Margaret Kennedy.
For 8,000 years, indigenous miners extracted blocks of chert from the surrounding limestone and chipped it into tradable chunks.
Chert is a glass-like mineral that can be shaped in any direction and was prized for the making of knives and points.
A TransAlta high-tension power line cuts across the site. There is no historical marker but the pits, back-filled with limestone, are clearly visible. Bits of discarded chert are easily spotted, but please leave them in place.
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