Doing Business in Elkford

Elkford is a picturesque Rocky Mountain town founded in 1971 as a home for miners working at newly-established Fording Coal Operations. From its early days as a collection of temporary homes, a one-room school, and a single general store, Elkford has grown to its current population of nearly 3,000 residents.

While Elkford continues to have strong economic and social connection to the mining industry, a number of trends will, collectively, have a pronounced and profound growth influence on Elkford’s future:

• modest growth of community population with anticipated mine employment expansion
• significantly higher than provincial average income
• growth of the regional tourism industry, particularly Fernie
• anticipated long-term expansion of the local mining industry
• exponential growth in mountain property and project investment originating most specifically from Calgary but also including Vancouver and North America.