Alberta Hotel (12849-20th Ave.) – Picariello’s hotel where chase of Steven Lawson started. Tunnels were excavated to hide alcohol.
The green building across the street from the cache was formerly the Alberta Hotel. It was constructed by Sick’s Lethbridge Brewery in the early 1900s and purchased in January 1918 by Emilio Picariello. It was used as a headquarters for his rum running operations and it is said that police who turned a blind eye to Pic’s bootlegging were offered free meals at the Hotel and along with bottles of liquor. Most notably, the Hotel was where Pic, Steve Picariello, and Jack McAlpine were caught unloading illegal liquor on September 21, 1922. For more information, check out Stephanie Laine Hamilton’s, Booze & Bars: A Brief History of Pub Crawls in the Crowsnest Pass.
Also check out the Rosse Building at 13013-12th Ave. and read the building plaque. Michael Rosse was a man of many titles, these included: merchant, town councillor, police commissioner, and rum runner.
This series has been put together for you to follow the trail of the Bootleggers “Rum Runners” in the Crowsnest Pass. There are 13 Caches. All called CNP Prohibition 16-(?). 16 is for the year 2016 and the number behind that is the number of the cache.
You can obtain a Passport at 7701 18th Ave, Coleman, Alberta - A National Historic Site. Passports with info will be available at 9:00 AM on July 30, 2016 The first 100 people to return the stamp filled Passport will receive a Commemorative Coin.
These caches will be “Part 1” of a series of our historic Corridor. We will be adding new caches, to be discovered during the Heritage weekend every year, with each year having a new historic theme.