User:Kline/KLGR
The Kirkland Lake Gold Rush was a gold rush that took place in Northern Ontario starting in 1906 and developing fully by the mid-1910s.
History
[edit]Pre-gold rush
[edit]An event that led to the eventual rush was the start of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway (T&NO), running from North Bay through to Cochrane. As it expanded northward, it allowed prospectors to support longer surveys deeper into the bush, looking for the minerals that were expected to stretch across all of Northern Ontario. Almost immediately the massive silver deposits in Cobalt were discovered, leading to the Cobalt silver rush in 1903. This led to Northern Ontario being filled with miners, assayers, prospectors and all the requirements for rapid development of new mining sites, which had also lead to the Porcupine Gold Rush in 1909.[1]
First findings
[edit]In 1906, railroad worker Tom Price was the first person to discover gold in the Kirkland Lake area. Working on the T&NO construction train, he had decided to explore upstream of the Murdock Creek via the right-of-way passage, in which he found a boulder that contained gold. After finding the boulder, he worked in a northwest direction to find a gold vein where the boulder may have come from. After reaching the south arm of what was to be named Kirkland Lake, he ran out of supplies and returned to the construction train towards Haileybury. After returning, he was unable to find the boulder again.
In 1907, government surveyor Louis Rourke was sent out to cut the east line of the Teck Township and to name the lake that Price had reached. It was named Kirkland Lake, after Winifred Kirkland, a secretary of the Surveys Branch of the Ontario Department of Mines in Toronto.
In 1908, the nearby settlement of Swastika was established as a camp for railway workers working on the T&NO along with the gold mine that had been started the previous year, featuring a three-story hotel which many miners stayed at.
References
[edit]- ^ Pain, S.A. (1960). Three Miles of Gold. Toronto: The Ryerson Press. pp. 2–6.
"Remember Kirkland Lake": the history and effects of the Kirkland Lake gold miners' strike, 1941-42 Fortunes in the ground: Cobalt, Porcupine & Kirkland Lake
