Moose River Gold Mines, Nova Scotia on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
Moose River Gold Mines is a Canadian
rural
In general, a rural area or a countryside is a geographic area that is located outside towns and cities. Typical rural areas have a low population density and small settlements. Agricultural areas and areas with forestry typically are describ ...
community located in
Nova Scotia
Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland".
Most of the population are native Eng ...
's
Halifax Regional Municipality
Halifax is the capital and largest municipality of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Nova Scotia, and the largest municipality in Atlantic Canada. As of the 2021 Census, the municipal population was 439,819, with 348 ...
.
It is located at the junction of Moose River Road and Mooseland Road. No numbered highways run through Moose River Gold Mines. Gold was discovered in the area in 1866 and mining started in the 1870s. Interest waned around 1900 but rose in the 1930s. The community gained international attention in 1936 when three men were trapped in the mine.
History
Gold was first discovered in the area in 1866, but no mining took place until the 1870s when the area became known as the Moose River Gold District. Interest waned in the early 1900s but resumed in the 1930s and the mine was brought back into production in 1935.
These historic workings produced some 26,000 oz. of gold which was largely taken from quartz veins, but some also from open slate quarries.
1936 disaster
On April 12, 1936 the roof of the mine collapsed, trapping three men, Herman Magill, Dr. David Robertson and Alfred Scadding, 150 feet down for 11 days. The men were reached by drilling a
borehole
A borehole is a narrow shaft bored in the ground, either vertically or horizontally. A borehole may be constructed for many different purposes, including the extraction of water ( drilled water well and tube well), other liquids (such as petrol ...
on the sixth day to bring food, water and a telephone until the rescue was completed. Robertson and Scadding survived and Magill died on the seventh day. The event was broadcast by J. Frank Willis of the
Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission
The Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission (CRBC), also referred to as the Canadian Radio Commission (CRC), was Canada's first public broadcaster and the immediate precursor to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
Origins
The CRBC was establis ...
(CRBC) to more than 650
radio station
Radio broadcasting is transmission of audio (sound), sometimes with related metadata, by radio waves to radio receivers belonging to a public audience. In terrestrial radio broadcasting the radio waves are broadcast by a land-based radio ...
s throughout
North America
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
over the course of fifty-six hours, and was picked up by the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC
Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
and broadcast to
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
.
It was the first live 24-hour radio coverage of a breaking news story in Canada.
Today, there is a
provincial park
Ischigualasto Provincial Park
A provincial park (or territorial park) is a park administered by one of the provinces of a country, as opposed to a national park. They are similar to state parks in other countries. They are typically open to the ...
with a
cairn
A cairn is a man-made pile (or stack) of stones raised for a purpose, usually as a marker or as a burial mound. The word ''cairn'' comes from the gd, càrn (plural ).
Cairns have been and are used for a broad variety of purposes. In prehis ...
and there was a
plaque
Plaque may refer to:
Commemorations or awards
* Commemorative plaque, a plate or tablet fixed to a wall to mark an event, person, etc.
* Memorial Plaque (medallion), issued to next-of-kin of dead British military personnel after World War I
* Pla ...
where the borehole was drilled, and there is a museum portraying the history of the gold mine.
The plaque was stolen sometime before June 28, 2006. It has yet to be recovered.
Mining in the 21st century
In the 1980s, drilling exploration in the area of the earlier slate workings found significant gold deposits in what became known as the Touquoy zone,
after a former mine owned by Damas Touquoy.
DDV Gold Ltd. applied to operate an
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 ...
gold mine in 2007. Deposits at the project named Touquoy hold an estimated 635,000 ounces (~18 tons) of gold, worth $700 million in 2012.
The surface operation will involve drilling, blasting, and
gold cyanidation
Gold cyanidation (also known as the cyanide process or the MacArthur-Forrest process) is a hydrometallurgical technique for extracting gold from low-grade ore by converting the gold to a water-soluble coordination complex. It is the most commonl ...
to process the ore.
The Moose River Gold Mines site will also process ore from the company's mine at its Beaver Dam deposit, 37 km away, which has an estimated yield of 426,600 ounces.
This will save the construction of a second
tailings
In mining, tailings are the materials left over after the process of separating the valuable fraction from the uneconomic fraction (gangue) of an ore. Tailings are different to overburden, which is the waste rock or other material that overlie ...
pond, and an old bush road will be upgraded to facilitate transport. The Moose River mine will have a life of five years and Beaver Dam just three.
There are more deposits at Cochrane Hill and Fifteen Mile Stream, 57 km away.
Despite the controversy of land expropriation,
production is expected to begin in 2015 or 2016.
Nearby attractions
*Moose River Gold Mines Museum
*Moose River Gold Mines Provincial Park
References
External links
Virtual Museum Moose River DisasterMoose River Provincial ParkExplore HRM
{{Authority control
Communities in Halifax, Nova Scotia
Mining communities in Nova Scotia
Surface mines in Canada
Mining rescues
Ghost towns in Nova Scotia