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Silver Islet refers to both a small rocky island and a small community located at the tip of the Sibley Peninsula in northwestern Ontario, Canada.
A rich vein of pure silver was discovered on this small island in 1868 by the Montreal Mining Company. At that time, the island was approximately 50 m2 (540 sq ft) in size and only 2.5 metres (8 ft 2 in) above the waters of Lake Superior. In 1870, the site was developed by Alexander H. Sibley's Silver Islet Mining Company which built wooden breakwaters around the island to hold back the lake's waves and increased the island's area substantially with crushed rock. The islet was expanded to over 10 times its original size and a small mining town was built up on the shore nearby.
After most of the purest ore from the original site had been removed, a second vein was discovered in 1878. By 1883, most of the highest quality silver had been extracted and the price of silver had declined. The final straw came when a shipment of coal did not arrive before the end of the shipping season. The pumps holding back the waters of the lake stopped and in early 1884 the islet's mine shafts, which had reached a depth of 384 metres, were flooded. They would never be de-watered, and the mine's underground operations would never be reopened.
Over the 16 years that the mine was in operation, $3.25 million worth of silver was extracted.
The houses originally built to house miners are now used as private summer cottages. The general store has been restored, and serves light meals in its tea-room, in addition to selling a variety of knickknacks and basic foodstuffs.
As recounted in an article written by Syd Hancock on January 21, 1972, on the occasion of Julian Cross's death, Silver Islet is the home of Julian (Jules) Cross, the founder of Steep Rock Iron Mine in Atikokan, Ontario. Outside the Atikokan Library & museum is a bronze plaque erected by the Ontario Department of Public Records and Archives to mark the historical significance of the Steep Rock Iron Range. On December 29, 1971, the man who unveiled this plaque, and made possible the Steep Rock story, Julian Gifford Cross, died at the age of 83. Born at Silver Islet on July 25, 1888, only four years after the closing of the mine, his destiny and the future of many others was inevitably associated with mining.[ importance? ]
Sleeping Giant Provincial Park has an excellent exhibit in its visitor centre, detailing the structure and history of the mine.
There is speculation that much silver remains to be recovered at this location, but attempts to reopen the mine in 1919 and the 1970s (reprocessing mine tailings) were not successful.
The Silver Islet Mine was also where "Vanners" were first used commercially to extract metal from low-grade ore. Known as the "Frue Vanner" as it was named for W. B. Frue, Superintendent of the Silver Islet Mine, who developed the system, it was first installed at the "Stamp Mill" beside "Frue's Brook" on the mainland. Modern versions of the Frue Vanner are still in use today.
Silver Islet, specifically the missing coal shipment in 1883, is the subject of the Tanglefoot song "One More Night".
Silver Islet is featured as the hometown of Sarah, a waitress, in Jane Urquhart's novel The Underpainter . [1]
The Seine River is a river in Kenora, Rainy River and Thunder Bay Districts in northwestern Ontario, Canada. It flows 240 kilometres (149 mi) from Lac des Mille Lacs to Rainy Lake.
Atikokan is a town in the Rainy River District in Northwestern Ontario, Canada. The population was 2,642 as of the 2021 census. The town is one of the main entry points into Quetico Provincial Park and promotes itself as the "Canoeing Capital of Canada". Atikokan was originally established as a Divisional Point for the Canadian Northern Railway.
Alexander Hamilton Sibley was the president of the Silver Islet Mining Company which operated a silver mine on the Sibley Peninsula in northwestern Ontario, which was purchased from the Montreal Mining Company after they had decided the mine was an "engineering nightmare" and sold it to Silver Islet Mining for $225,000.
The Sibley Peninsula is a 52-kilometre (32 mi) long and 10-kilometre (6 mi) wide peninsula in Ontario, Canada, on Lake Superior. It projects into the lake from Superior's north shore, and separates Thunder Bay to the west from Black Bay to the east.
Silver mining is the extraction of silver by mining. Silver is a precious metal and holds high economic value. Because silver is often found in intimate combination with other metals, its extraction requires the use of complex technologies. In 2008, approximately 25,900 metric tons of silver were consumed worldwide, most of which came from mining. Silver mining has a variety of effects on the environment, humans, and animals.
The Kanichee Mine, also less commonly known as the Ajax Mine, is an abandoned base metal and precious metal mine, located in the Temagami region of northeastern Ontario, Canada. It is near the small unincorporated community of Temagami North, accessed by the Kanichee Mine Road from Highway 11. The Kanichee Mine zone has been explored and mined discontinuously from as early as 1910. During the 20th century, it operated and closed down at least three times, with the most recent being from 1973 to 1976. To date, the discontinuous operation of Kanichee Mine has produced 4.2 million pounds of metal.
Silver mining in the United States began on a major scale with the discovery of the Comstock Lode in Nevada in 1858. The industry suffered greatly from the demonetization of silver in 1873 by the Coinage Act of 1873, known pejoratively as the "Crime of 73", but silver mining continues today.
In Michigan, copper mining became an important industry in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its rise marked the start of copper mining as a major industry in the United States.
The Porcupine Gold Rush was a gold rush that took place in Northern Ontario starting in 1909 and developing fully by 1911. A combination of the hard rock of the Canadian Shield and the rapid capitalization of mining meant that smaller companies and single-man operations could not effectively mine the area, as opposed to earlier rushes where the gold could be extracted through placer mining techniques. Although a number of prospectors made their fortune, operations in the area are marked largely by the development of larger mining companies, and most people involved in the mining operations were their employees.
Vanning is a type of ore dressing by which ores are washed on a shovel. Typically, a powdered sample of orestuff is swirled with water on the blade of a shovel and then given a series of upward flicking motions. The heavier ore is tossed up through the water and appears as a crescent shaped patch at the top of the charge with the lighter gangue below. Developed in western England, this process was still in use at a major tin mine and a mine waste collection firm in Cornwall until 1985.
The Temagami Greenstone Belt (TGB) is a small 2.7 billion year old greenstone belt in the Temagami region of Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It represents a feature of the Superior craton, an ancient and stable part of the Earth's lithosphere that forms the core of the North American continent and Canadian Shield. The belt is composed of metamorphosed volcanic rocks that range in composition from basalt to rhyolite. These form the east-northeast trend of the belt and are overlain by metamorphosed sedimentary rocks. They were created during several volcanic episodes involving a variety of eruptive styles ranging from passive lava eruptions to viscous explosive eruptions.
Hushing is an ancient and historic mining method using a flood or torrent of water to reveal mineral veins. The method was applied in several ways, both in prospecting for ores, and for their exploitation. Mineral veins are often hidden below soil and sub-soil, which must be stripped away to discover the ore veins. A flood of water is very effective in moving soil as well as working the ore deposits when combined with other methods such as fire-setting.
The Cobalt silver rush was a silver rush in Ontario, Canada that began in 1903 when huge veins of silver were discovered by workers on the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway (T&NO) near the Mile 103 post. By 1905 a full-scale silver rush was underway, and the town of Cobalt, Ontario sprang up to serve as its hub. By 1908 Cobalt produced 9% of the world's silver, and in 1911 produced 31,507,791 ounces of silver. However, the good ore ran out fairly rapidly, and most of the mines were closed by the 1930s. There were several small revivals over the years, notably in World War II and again in the 1950s, but both petered out and today there is no active mining in the area. In total, the Cobalt area mines produced 460 million ounces of silver.
The Climax mine, located in Climax, Colorado, United States, is a major molybdenum mine in Lake and Summit counties, Colorado. Shipments from the mine began in 1915. At its highest output, the Climax mine was the largest molybdenum mine in the world, and for many years it supplied three quarters of the world's supply of molybdenum.
Beanland Mine, also known as Clenor Mine, is an abandoned surface and underground mine in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It is located about 1 km (0.62 mi) west of Arsenic Lake and 4 km (2.5 mi) northwest of the town of Temagami in central Strathy Township. It is named after Sydney Beanland, who first claimed the mine site in the 1920s and was a director for the mine from 1937 to 1938.
The Seine River Diversion is a river diversion in Rainy River District in northwestern Ontario, Canada located near Atikokan. It was built to divert water around open-pit hematite iron ore mining at Steep Rock Lake beginning in 1943.
Steep Rock Lake is a body of water near the township of Atikokan, northern Ontario, Canada. It was originally fed by the Seine River.
Priest Mine is an abandoned surface and underground mine in Northeastern Ontario, Canada. It is located about 19 km (12 mi) northwest of the hamlet of Marten River on an island in north-central Cross Lake. Dating back to the early 1900s, it is one of the oldest mines in the municipality of Temagami.
The Sumdum mine is one of the largest lead and zinc mines in United States. The mine is located in north-western United States in Alaska. The mine has reserves amounting to 24 million tonnes of ore grading 0.37% zinc and 79.1 million oz of silver.
Coldstream Copper Mine, sometimes called the North Coldstream Copper Mine, the Coldstream Mine, or the North Coldstream Mine is a decommissioned former copper, silver and gold mine adjacent to Burchell Lake. It is located 11km south of Kashabowie, in Northern Ontario, Canada.