McLeese Lake is an unincorporated community on

British Columbia Highway 97 Highway 97 is a major highway in the Canadian province of British Columbia. It is the longest continuously numbered route in the province, running and is the only route that runs the entire north–south length of the British Columbia, connect ...

in the

Cariboo The Cariboo is an intermontane region of British Columbia, Canada, centered on a plateau stretching from Fraser Canyon to the Cariboo Mountains. The name is a reference to the caribou that were once abundant in the region. The Cariboo was the ...

region of the

Central Interior of British Columbia Central is an adjective usually referring to being in the center of some place or (mathematical) object. Central may also refer to: Directions and generalised locations * Central Africa, a region in the centre of Africa continent, also known as ...

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. It is named for the lake of the same name, which itself was named for Robert McLeese, a pioneer storekeeper, hotelier and steamboat owner and also politician. McLeese Lake is home to the

Gibraltar Mine The Gibraltar Mine is a Canadian copper mine operated by Taseko Mines near McLeese Lake in British Columbia, Canada. It is the second largest open-pit mine in Canada and the fourth largest in North America. The mine is the largest employer in ...

, Canada's second-largest

open pit Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique of extracting rock or minerals from the earth from an open-air pit, sometimes known as a borrow. This form of minin ...

copper Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu (from la, cuprum) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkis ...

mine, which is located approximately 10km north of town. In addition to copper, the Gibraltar Mine also mines

Molybdenum Molybdenum is a chemical element with the symbol Mo and atomic number 42 which is located in period 5 and group 6. The name is from Neo-Latin ''molybdaenum'', which is based on Ancient Greek ', meaning lead, since its ores were confused with lea ...

References

{{coord, 52, 25, 12, N, 122, 17, 43, W, display=title Designated places in British Columbia Geography of the Cariboo Unincorporated settlements in British Columbia