Who’s ready for a glimpse into one of the most famous “ghost towns” in the province? Situated near Terrace, tucked behind the Alaska Panhandle, the townsite of Kitsault has a fascinating history to say the very least. Its first inhabitants were ancestors of the Nisga’a Nation, who are said to have first settled in northern B.C. some 12,000 years ago.
A treasure chest of metals
Flash forward to the year 1979, and the area became a near-overnight mining town for an obscure but (at the time) highly sought-after metal called molybdenum.
According to the town’s website, U.S.-based mining company Phelps Dodge needed a town and bodies to help mine 109 million tons of the metal lying beneath the old-growth forest in the remote BC fjord. What would it be used for, you may ask? Molybdenum was valued for its corrosion resistance and “hardness,” and was frequently used in the nose cones of rockets in the arms race.
As B.C. had long been a “treasure chest of metals” ranging from silver and lead to copper and even gold, the company thought to strike while the iron was hot. Little did they know that the 1982 recession would plummet prices before the paint was even dry on the new town.
As there were no inhabitants as of 1979 apart from silver foxes and grizzly bears, the company began to construct homes and attract hundreds of workers in a hurried frenzy. Unfortunately, the recession that came a few years later would render the town uninhabitable once again.
From then on, the shiny new town sat abandoned for over two decades, home to only a single caretaker and a host of foxes and grizzlies.
Had its lawns not been mowed or the boulevards maintained, the community would have vanished into a forest of alder trees over 10 metres high, according to Dr. Norma Kerby in their 2011 book on the town.
Preserved for decades
Today, pieces of old mining equipment have been swallowed up by the forest edges, though the town’s buildings have been maintained and heated for over 20 years.
There are also 2.4 km of waterfront teaming with fish and crab, surrounded by snow-capped mountains that have never been skied and apple trees with fruit that has never been picked.
As one might expect, the abandoned townsite rarely gets any visitors. But stay tuned for future tours provided by Northern B.C. Jet Boat Tours.
How to get there: Drive 17 hours from Vancouver to Kitsault via Cariboo Highway/BC-97 N and Yellowhead Highway W/BC-16 W.
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