For eight decades, a local legend spoke of an old car that had sunk beneath the surface of Lake Minnewanka in Alberta’s Banff National Park. The story started so long ago that people were unsure if it was actually true. Now, a group of divers has found the vintage car.
Passed down through generations, the story tells of a man who drove his vehicle out onto the frozen lake. As he stopped on the ice to set up his camera, the ice cracked. He could only watch on as his car sank into the lake. This likely happened sometime in the late 1930s or early 1940s. The exact details of the incident have faded over time.
Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park, above, freezes solidly in winter, but taking a vehicle on it would be risky. Photo: Jerry Kobalenko
The scuba-diving grapevine
Divers John Ryan, Alan Keller, and Brian Nadwidny heard about the car through the scuba-diving grapevine and decided to see if they could actually find it.
“We found it because there were people in the lake a few years ago doing some searching for other purposes,” Keller told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “And so they came across this target. And of course with the world being a small place and scuba divers being a small community, they shared that information with us.”
After about seven minutes of searching, they spotted the old car, which lay 55m down. The lake’s frigid temperature had preserved it remarkably well. Keller described the excitement they felt when they made the discovery.
“It was a state of like, ‘Holy cow, we actually found it,’ ” said Keller. “To be able to find something so small on a first go, but also to be the first people to lay your eyes on it after 85 years was pretty spectacular.”
Photo: Alan Keller
The group thinks the car is a 1928 Hudson Essex Saloon. It still bears its Saskatchewan license plate, number 48009. Sitting upright on the lake bed, its body largely intact, you can even see the park pass from some angles.
Although divers cannot remove the car due to its location in a protected national park, they have captured detailed photos and video, offering a rare glimpse into a piece of lost history. Parks Canada has confirmed that the vehicle poses no environmental risk and will remain in place.
