Lost Mines of Lanark County - Part 4: The Places and the Players

The mines we’ll look at in more detail have connections to the following communities just west of Ottawa. All but Calabogie fall within Lanark County.

  

The area east of a north-south line running through Almonte and Carleton Place consists mainly of exposed limestone formations, including the unique Burnt Lands Alvar a few kilometers to the east of Almonte. The limestone here reveals only a few of the most primitive marine fossils (e.g. shellfish and trace fossils) but lacks the spectacular fossils of later eras because the glaciers long since ground away all the more recent fossil-bearing layers.  

To the west of this line rises the Canadian Shield, which forms an obvious ridge just outside Almonte and runs north to Pakenham along the Mississippi River valley. This ridge once formed the western shore of Lake Champlain, an inland sea that connected to the St. Lawrence River valley and the Atlantic Ocean after the last ice age about 12,000 years ago. Visible evidence of the ancient shoreline today includes the broad sand deposits along the Old Perth Road just west of Almonte, which were once beaches probably teeming with seals, walruses, and other creatures. Today the Lanark highlands is full of swamps and lakes that formed in the pits and valleys scoured out by the glaciers in the hard, impervious rock.

The geology of Lanark County promoted the formation of mineral deposits with industrial value. In the early 1800s, government surveyors exploring the area discovered this extensive mineral potential. They noted that compass readings were affected in some areas where the geology was known to be conducive to iron ore formation, suggesting the presence of significant deposits.

Mapping studies over the next few decades revealed a trend of north/south strikes, particularly along the area that eventually became the route of the K&P Railway. Some of the major mines that we’ll examine are indicated with red dots in the picture below; the dots along the left follow the K&P. For the most part these are iron mines, but deposits of silver, gold, copper, and other minerals were also identified. The discovery of potentially rich mineral deposits, combined with the waning square timber industry and the rising pulpwood industry, set the stage for developing roads, rails, mines, and settlement in Lanark County.

By 1871 construction of the K&P was well underway. As it pushed north, small communities around the pulpwood and mining industries sprang up. Some politics was involved as well: the original route of the K&P was well to the north of its current route in the area of Lavant Station. 

Note on the map the location of "Iron Mine" in the bottom left corner. This is the Wilbur mine. The community marked "Lavant" is not to be confused with Lavant Station, which was  incorporated by William Caldwell as "Iron City" in 1881 when the railway arrived.  

The influence of one of the local industry magnates—probably Boyd Caldwell or his nephew William (who was pursuing a mine near what became Flower Station)—got the route pushed south to its present location. Compare with the map above. 

Who were the Caldwells?

To understand the mines you need to understand the people behind them. The Caldwell name is unavoidable in this context. There were many Caldwells: they were movers and shakers, and many of them had the same name—which creates a lot of confusion when trying to understand exactly who did what. The Caldwells must’ve recognized this ambiguity, because sometimes they added or changed their names to help distinguish each other. As best as I can figure out by correlating reliable dates for births, deaths, and reports, these are the key Caldwells with respect to the mining story.

A key insight is that it was the cousins Thomas Boyd Caldwell and William Clyde Caldwell who had the main mining interests. Fortunately, both had distinguished political careers (federally, Thomas; provincially, William), which means there's a good public record on their activities. Unfortunately, their political record overshadows their personal business record and makes it hard to sift out any details about the mines. My sense is that their interest in mining was very much a sideline activity, with politics and running their main timber and woolen mill interests being their main focus. 

Thomas’s father, Boyd, began mining the Wilbur site in January 1880, before the arrival of the K&P in 1881. I haven’t been able to find much detail about mining activity at Wilbur before 1880, although some test pits were probably dug. Indeed, mining reports for 1884 note that early development had long since been abandoned and that little was known about prior activity beside some anecdotes from speaking with the Caldwells. The Wilbur mine will be covered in a lot more detail in a future post.  

The ambiguous names also create some mysteries about which descriptions relate to which mine sites. At the time, everyone knew who “Caldwell” was and understood the proper context when referring to “the Caldwell mine”. The available record often doesn’t clarify which mine is the subject; there’s just a reference to yet another “Caldwell” mine. This is further compounded by the frequent change in ownership of different mine sites, some eventually bought back by earlier owners. Throughout this evolution, even a mine that is named in a contemporary record may not reflect the true ownership. Locals probably knew it by one name, and people elsewhere may have used different names. Figuring out which descriptions relate to which mines requires building a timeline of activity at each location, reviewing ownership records, and correlating with other dated information. I’ve attempted to do this where possible and my story reflects my best understanding of the record.

In addition to their timber operations, Boyd Caldwell and his son Thomas ran the Appleton woolen mill, the ruins of which are still visible today at the falls in Appleton.

Alexander Caldwell, Boyd’s brother and himself a timber baron, built “Clyde Hall”, a beautiful stone home in the town of Lanark. 

An interesting footnote to this story is the dispute Boyd Caldwell had with Peter McLaren, another timber baron in the region. At issue was who could access waterways for the running of squared timber which was sent down the rivers to eventually reach the Ottawa lumber yards. At the time, waterways such as the Mississippi, Fall, and Clyde Rivers in Lanark County were privately owned—usually by the timber barons. The dispute eventually reached one of the highest courts in England and was finally won by the Caldwells, establishing the principle that waterways are open to all. As a result of this case, Canadians today enjoy access to most waterways and lakes across the country.

Here’s a picture of the K&P locomotive #9, the “Boyd Caldwell”, which probably dates to around 1886-1887. Boyd Caldwell died in 1888 so it’s likely this locomotive was named for him rather than his son Thomas Boyd, who would only be in his early 30’s and probably not yet wealthy (or socially established) enough to have his own eponymous toy.

Not to be outdone, in 1887 William Caldwell (who was 14 years older than his cousin Thomas and already an MPP) also scored himself a personalized locomotive, the K&P #10.  By this time the K&P railway to Renfrew had been complete for three years, so what better way to celebrate?

In the next post we’ll look into the mining technology of the day because it serves as another important basis to understand the historic record, and to interpret site features.

Lost Mines of Lanark County - Part 3: Why mine?

Examining the historical context of mining in Canada—and in particular in Lanark County in the late 1800s—can give us a better understanding of how sites like the Wilbur iron mine came to be developed.

There are many interesting economic parallels between the respective technology booms of the Victorian era and our modern era. The late 1800s represented the peak of Victorian industrialization, with bull markets for machinery and the commodities needed to make those machines and then produce goods with them.  This was especially so in North America, where population expansion westwards and the rapid growth of cities and railroads following the US Civil War created a high demand for iron. If you were an engineer wanting to develop cutting-edge technology, this was a great time to be an entrepreneur. From trains to the evolution of high-rise buildings, every industry was pushing the limits of technology at the time—much like how the dot-com era pushed limits a century later. At the same time, with the rise of powerful steamships, there was both a capability and appetite for global trade in raw commodities.

For a young nation like Canada at the time, the period after Confederation in 1867 saw the confluence of economic boom, waves of skilled and unskilled immigrants arriving from Europe, and strong interest from emerging joint stock companies looking to invest in and develop the relatively uncharted riches of Canada’s virgin territory. There was a lot of money to be made. An obvious opportunity was to enhance the value chain from ore to manufactured goods. In Eastern Ontario and especially in Kingston, this was probably seen to be the “next big thing” for a young nation to pursue as the longstanding square timber trade began to wane following a hundred years of depleting the region’s virgin stands.

In Eastern Ontario in the 1880s, Ottawa was still very much a lumber town transitioning into its new role as the nation’s capital where fun would be forgotten. Kingston was the de facto industrial, military, and political centre of the region, being well situated on the shore of Lake Ontario where it served as an important nexus of lake, road and rail traffic between Upper and Lower Canada and the U.S. It was also home to the KingstonLocomotive Works.

Kingston Locomotive Works, 1880:

Kingston’s appetite for iron foretold demand for a local iron smelter. There was already good lake access to U.S. coal needed to fire the blast furnaces, and preliminary surveys of the area north of Kingston revealed indications of iron ore along the north-south interface between the predominate limestone formations to the east, and the Canadian Shield rising up to the west. However, up to 1870, local iron mining was an intermittent activity conducted in small, mostly hand-worked operations. Ore was generally mined and taken away in the winter, when hauling was cheap and frozen lakes and rivers facilitated access. While many questions remained about the actual extent of iron deposits north of Kingston and whether they would be adequate to supply local industry, the combination of railway expansion in general and the need to facilitate the exploration and extraction of timber and minerals proved irresistible to investors. Construction of the K&P (itself an epic tale) started in 1871, optimistically aiming for Pembroke.

Here's a K&P locomotive in 1885:

Skipping ahead to the early 1890s, there was finally serious talk of building an iron smelter in Kingston. This would be a significant industrial undertaking, probably similar to the Cambria Iron and Steels blast furnace shown below in Pennsylvania in 1906.  

Although the K&P had reached Renfrew by 1884, ten years later there was still no definitive survey of the iron ore potential along the rail line. Finally, in 1895 and then again in 1900, E. D. Ingall of the Geological Survey conducted detailed field surveys to ascertain the extent of iron ore along the K&P. His work included visits to mines and interviews with mine owners, including cousins W. C. Caldwell and Boyd Caldwell of the mines at Flower Station and Wilbur, respectively. Ingall’s 93-page report [Report on the Iron Ore Deposits along the Kingston and Pembroke Railway in Eastern Ontario; Geological Survey of Canada, 1901] is an entertaining and rich source of first-hand information about the state of mining in Lanark County. The survey map included with this report also forms an important basis for interpreting the Wilbur site, as I’ll show in a future post.

In the next post, we’ll examine the geographical context of the lost mines and provide some orientation for more detailed discussion. 

Wilbur Mine presentation: May 20, 2015

By the early 1900's the Wilbur Mine near Lavant Station on the K&P rail line in Lanark County was one of the largest iron mines in Ontario. As many as 250 miners, engineers, laborers, woodcutters, their wives, and children eked out a tough existence in the community of Wilbur that waxed and waned with the fortunes of the mine. Today the bush has taken back all but a few traces of this fascinating history.

For the last few years I've been researching the lost mines of Lanark county, with a focus on the Wilbur mine site, to try to build a sense what was once there. On May 20, 2015 at 7:30 p.m., I'll be presenting my findings to the Rideau Township Historical Society at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Kars. This will be a repeat of the presentation I gave last year at the Almonte Lecture Series. 

The public is invited to attend.

Lost Iron Mines of Lanark County - Almonte Lecture Series Feb 21

Here's the blurb for my upcoming lecture on the Wilbur Mine.

Friday February 21 at 7:30 p.m.

Almonte United Church

106 Elgin St.Almonte, ON K0A 1A0

If you are visiting the Lanark Highlands just to the west of Ottawa, you'd be forgiven for thinking that it has always been a sparsely populated, rugged wilderness. But if you scratch beneath the surface, you'll find another story that's all but forgotten. 

In the late 1800s, Lanark County was transformed by discoveries of rich deposits of iron ore and other minerals. Demand in Kingston for local iron sources to feed the booming industry there led to the creation of the Kingston and Pembroke Railway. As the rails pushed north, mines and towns sprung up along the way and helped turn eastern Ontario into one of the most active mining regions in Canada. But the boom was short-lived. By the early 1900s the ore deposits proved uneconomical. The mines closed, communities became ghost towns, and finally the rails were pulled up. Dense overgrowth now hides few remaining clues.  

In this lecture, Jordan Smith of Almonte will present the story of the Wilbur iron mine, once the largest iron mine in Ontario. He will share insights gained from exploring the mine site itself, a project he started after discovering some curious gaps in the historical record. 

Jordan Smith holds a combined degree in physics, engineering, and English from the University of Waterloo. Following careers in high tech and the arts, he now works at Deloitte where he advises clients on finance matters relating to R&D. Jordan's many interests include history, archaeology, and teaching which is especially close to his heart. He can often be found deep in the backcountry on his motorbike exploring old trails and ghost towns.

Edit: Over 100 people turned up for my presentation. I heard later that many people were disappointed they couldn't attend. I'm looking into giving the presentation again soon, so if you're interested in that stayed tuned.

Wilbur mine update - fieldwork photos

A rare window of good weather on Sunday was all the reason I needed to get out to the Wilbur Mine and start mapping the features in more details than has previously been possible. If you haven't read my previous updates on this project, documenting the history of the Wilbur Iron Mine near Lavant Station (which faded into the bush a century ago) has been a pet research project of mine for the past few years.

Last week I went to the National Aerial Photography Library (NAPL) in Ottawa and scoured the archives for old photos of the mine site. The earliest photo they had of the site was from 1934. It shows a completely different view of the area. Although the mine closed around 1912, by 1934 some key reference points remained uncovered by vegetation or flooded by beaver dams. In Illustrator I was able to scale superimpose the photo onto a map of the mine workings that I traced from a scan of a 1901 original, to create a home-brew GIS with multiple layers of detail. It was fascinating when the two pictures finally aligned and revealed insights I hadn't expected.

Armed with this new map, on Sunday I met up with Marc, one of the property owners at the mine site, to scout through the bush and locate key mine features. Some of these I'd seen before thanks to Bud Thomas (whose mother was a housekeeper at the mine), but Marc's enthusiasm for the subject and knowledge of his property were invaluable help. Below are some of the points of interest. A century of neglect has left many of these ruins unrecognizable to the uninformed eye.

There were 8 workings at the mine site, with #3 and #7 the main points of ore extraction with permanent mechanical installations. The first sign of #7 is a large tailings dump that is clearly out of place in the local features.

On a little ridge near the dump can be seen random iron fixed into the bedrock. This eyelet was probably used to attach a rope or guy-wire to the system for lifting ore out of the working face. 

Just over the ridge is a pond. Closer inspection reveals the rails which led down to the working face of #7 where ore was extracted. These rails were likely supported by a square timber structure which has long since collapsed. Some of the longer timbers could be seen poking up out of the water. 

Past the tailings dump of workings 7 is the K&P rail spur which branched off the main K&P line at nearby Wilbur. The spur follows a long arc around the main mine site, with a second dedicated siding coming back to Workings 3, the largest of the mine operations. The rail bed has severely eroded in many places, especially where it passes near a stream, but clean rock cuts along the sides give it away.

Just past the end of the ridge at workings 7 is the remains of a stone building which the old map suggests was a smithy. Tools for drilling the rock would need to be sharpened and reforged frequently, making a nearby smithy essential. In line with the rails emerging from the flooded face were also some concrete pier bases, likely to supported a system for removing tailings to the dump and ore to cars waiting on the nearby spur.

One of the smaller workings (not numbered on the 1901 map) is this tunnel near workings 7. Bud told me a neighbour used it to store venison. The original tunnel was about 50' long and ended in a shaft which is now just a sunken pit. A series of narrow open cuts zigzag around the area, suggesting the workings were created to determine the location and orientation of the ore strike.  

A fair distance away is workings 3. this was the largest at the Wilbur mine and had extensive tailings dumps which are now completely overgrown. Only the occasional loose rock on the ground, conspicuously fractured and missing moss, hinted at what once happened here. The face of workings 3 is at the treeline and extends underground for about 300' with several tunnels and shafts. It's all flooded now, thanks to the beavers and lack of pumping. Unflooding it would be quite an undertaking. 

Here's an shaft above workings 7. Marc thinks it was a ventilation shaft and that makes sense. There was very little ruble around it, suggesting it was first drilled then blasted with waste material removed from below. 

The K&P spur off the main line passed by this weigh scale now well hidden by brush and blow-down. This was located near workings 7, across a large beaver pond. A squared timber that may have been used in the weigh scale lay nearby.

Here's where the old road to Lavant disappears into the bush. Bud used to plow this road in the winter many years ago. Now the road tends to flood in one section in the spring, and it has been made redundant by a newer road higher up.

Finally, this appears to be the foundation of an old rooming house for mine workers, located where the old Lavant Rd. heads into the bush. This may have been where Bud's mother worked; I'll have to ask him.

This is just a sample of some of the features we saw at the old site. I'll be returning soon to take more pictures and GPS points of these features. These will be overlaid on my map to see how they align with the records. Comparing notes with Marc, it's clear that not all the features are shown on my 1901 maps, suggesting that new buildings were erected and the mine workings were extended after 1901.

If you want to learn more, I'll be giving a lecture on the project in February.

Wilbur Mine update

I've been asked to give a presentation on my Wilbur mine research at the Almonte Lecture Series in early 2014. Nothing like a deadline to motivate work!

I'm actually really excited about this, because I've started back on my research and have reconnected with the families who own the property on which the mine sites are located. In an incredible set of coincidences, I rode out on the Canada Day long weekend to see who would be there, and met two people I know in Ottawa--a client of mine, and someone I've worked with online on advising a friend's business venture. I had no idea that either person was connected to the mine site! this is fantastic news because it means much easier access to information, the site, and artifacts to assist with my research.

Also, I've just learned through a friend that a professor of archeology he knows has offered to help me map the site.

On a related note, I've shared some of my material with Sali Tagliamonte, the U of T professor who's researching dialects of Lanark County. Her work is fascinating and you can hear an interview with her on CBC radio if you search their archives.

So lots of work yet to do, but important work because it will consolidate various bits and pieces of our local history for everyone to learn from and enjoy.

Boyd Caldwell Mine - Found!

Recently the weather was crappy and I wasn't feeling so hot myself, so I figured it was about time I gave the "Mayor of Wilbur", Bud Thomas a call to see if I could interview him. Bud grew up in Wilbur out on the K&P rail line, and his grampa worked in the Boyd Caldwell mine nearby back in the late 1800s. His mom cooked and cleaned at a local rooming house which has long since disappeared. She'd been down in the mine as a little girl. Bud is a rare treasure of oral history about a fascinating and all but lost part of early Canadian settlement. I spent three hours with Bud asking him about his experiences growing up in the Lavant Station area and recorded all of it. I plan to edit and submit the recordings to the local archives, and will post some clips here.

Bud's getting on in years and his health isn't so good, but he's full of energy and stories. We started our conversation in the kitchen of his old frame house, wood smoke in the air and whisky on the table. As you can tell from the audio clips I'll post, I'm no professional interviewer. I just wanted to get Bud talking. Before long we were out sitting in his white Lincoln Town Car (license plate: "KP LINE"), bouncing along the KP Line itself on a mission into the bush. I have to say, I'd never gone off-roading in a Lincoln before. It was touch-and-go several times as Bud patiently and expertly guided us down narrow trails, through beaver floods, over boulders, and down wet grassy slopes. But we made it to our destination: the site of Wilbur town, and the sites of the old Boyd Caldwell and Wilbur mines nearby.

I'd been in this area before, looking for evidence that there used to be a town of 250 people here. I thought I knew where I was looking. I was wrong. The signs were so subtle there's no way anyone would see them unless you know exactly where to look. Bud described how the area used to look 70 years ago. There were open meadows, roads, houses, train tracks, tall piles of mine tailings, boardwalks, and electric lights. Both Wilbur and nearby Lavant Station were important industrial towns in Eastern Ontario in 1884. Kids came from all over to attend the Wilbur school. Miners, lumbermen, farmers and their families came to town to drink, dance and socialize. Then the bottom fell out of the iron market in the late 1800s. It was no longer economical to run the Wilbur mines and ship the ore to Pittsburgh for smelting. The mines shut for good. Or did they?

Bud told me a story about how the mine owners tried to raise money to "reopen" the mines. They visited all the hardware supply stores in the area and bought up all the tar paper that locals used to roof their shacks. Then they burned the tar paper down in the mines to create thick clouds of smoke, like the coal-fired water pumps and air compressors made. Photos were taken to show how the mines were "operating" at full steam in an attempt to persuade people in New York to fork over more capital. It was all a scam of course, and the mines soon shut for good.

With no hope for a local economy, the town of Wilbur on its spur of the K&P quickly faded away. Locals pulled out the rails and any other metal they could find to sell for scrap. Beavers blocked a stream which flooded a marsh and submerged the old rail spur past town. The rail line to the mine head washed out as nearby ponds flooded. Shacks and houses decayed, bricks crumbled, and nature worked its inexorable fingers into anything manmade. By the 1930s, Bud said there were only foundations covered with old flooring left to see. Forestry operations soon ran over those remains.

Now, as you walk around the dense bush that has overgrown the town and mine sites, you need a keen eye to see signs of former industry. Bud hadn't been back here in 65 years and he was surprised by how much it had changed. But he has a keen memory, and he recalled where the trails were, where so-and-so's house used to be, where the caves were that a childhood friend of his used to crawl into, and where a huge henhouse used to stand. He showed me a square-cut cave in a rock where a local used to store his food. Now all that remains are vague impressions in the ground on suspiciously straight lines, and scraps of metal, brick and old railway ties.

I've been in touch with local landowners about getting access to more of the site and family archive so I can do more research. Unfortunately, there's been a longstanding dispute about who owns what in the area and access has been a bit delicate. While I'm no Pierre Berton, I'm passionate about studying our heritage and I hope that we can overcome these challenges together and better document this story for future generations.

Photo 1: Entrance to the "Lower Road" off Bottle Lake Rd., which leads directly to the centre of old Wilbur. Bud used to maintain this road. It's been impassible since the ice storm of 1998.

Photo 2: The cold storage cave in Wilbur town site where a man Bud knew used to keep his meat, vegetables and butter. From marks and other signs in the area, it looks like it might have originally been a test shaft for the mine.

Photo 3: Bud looking over the old rail spur beside the mine. This gully was blasted out of the rock and now a stream flows where rails used to be. Remnants of rail ties and the odd scrap of ballast give it away. Behind Bud and over the slope to his right is the main mine shaft. There are huge tailings pile nearby.

Photo 4. The mine head. I'm not sure yet if this is the Boyd Caldwell mine or the Wilbur Mine, but I think it's the latter. Bud showed me the other minehead on the hydro cut. It's not at all obvious. This one still had rails sticking out at an angle, and nearby you could see where the mine lift was located to pull ore out on the rails. This mine was about 70' deep. The pool is about 80' across. It was pouring rain and hard to get a good shot here.

Wilbur mine located!

Tonight I rode out to Wilbur to look--for about the fifth time--for evidence of the former Boyd Caldwell mine. As I passed the old house on the Wilbur Road I noticed a man sitting on the porch, so I stopped for a chat. John "Bud" Thomas and his wife Brenda are probably the only two people living in what's left of Wilbur. Bud is 75, friendly, and full of stories. He's agreed to let me record a conversation with him about his experiences growing up in the area.

Bud's mother and grandfather worked in the mine, so he was able to describe some good details of the mine operation and its location. The old train station was at the end of Bud's property along the K&P. There were another 22 houses at one time, but they weren't located where the map or remaining buildings would suggest. It seems that the village was actually a bit further south along the K&P. Thanks to Bud's instructions I found the rail spur bed. It comes in at a Y as I suspected, but near a flooded area south of Bud's house that doesn't look like where there should be anything of interest. I'm planning to do some better data collection on all these locations so there's a better record for posterity.

As for the mine itself, a beaver pond has long since covered some of the more important remains and the bush has all but reclaimed the rest. The landscape is now quite different from what it was, so it's really not obvious where to look and you're unlikely to stumble across the remains by accident. Bud told me there may still be foundations of the houses and some ore piles visible in the woods.

One footnote about placenames: Bud said that Lavant Station was of course called "Iron City" originally, but when Bud grew up it was known as "South Lavant". I think he said Lavant was called "North Lavant" or "Robertson" (same as the lake it sits on). He shook his head in disgust when I showed him my map, and said he doesn't understand why all the names were changed when the modern maps were made.

If it ever stops raining (the bush is soggy and the deer flies are many and merciless) I'll be back in a heartbeat to follow up on these findings.

Some sleuthing uncovers intriguing details about the old iron mines in the Wilbur/Lavant Station area along the abandoned K&P railway. Here's an excerpt from an Ontario government annual report dated 1884:

"Boyd Caldwell Mine -- The Boyd Caldwell Mine is at Wilbur Station, in the south western part of the township of Lavant, close to the Kingston and Pembroke road, and a siding is laid from the track to the mouth of the shaft. The machinery consists of a twenty horse-power boiler, a steam hoist, and other plant. The shaft has been sunk about 75 feet, and 6,000 tons of ore have been taken out, but the mine had been closed for some time previous to my visit. It is owned by Mr. Boyd Caldwell, of Lanark.

"Wilbur Mine -- This one is near the Boyd Caldwell mine, and is owned by the Wilbur Iron Mining and Manufacturing Company, the stock of which is controlled at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Its machinery consists of an air compressor for driving six drills, a double hoist, a fifty horse-power boiler and other plant. The quantity of ore shipped from it in 1882 was 8,000 tons; in 1883, 17,000 tons; and in 1884, 9,200 tons. the hamlet of Wilbur has a population of about 250 souls, nearly all of whom are miners."

I haven't found the mine sites yet, but I'm looking. It's challenging because the mines were abandonded 100+ years ago and the bush has reclaimed its sovereignty. As you can see in the pictures there's not much left of even Wilbur. It's hard to imagine that here in the 1880s there was once two boarding houses, a blacksmith shop, shoemaker, shingle mill, and carpentry shop, and probably a scattering of rough shanties that housed some 250 hard-drinking miners.

The old rail spur to the Caldwell mine head should still be visible. It sure wasn't obvious when I went looking last weekend, thanks to the undergrowth and incredible clouds of deer flies (I was saved by my motorbike helmet). I explored one promising, rutted side trail along a ridge on the east side of the main K&P line, but it seemed too steep for rail and at too sharp an angle to be a practical spur. Then it got too dark to explore further. It did look like a good accessible spot for a mine though, so I'm going to look again and compare on Google Earth with some GPS readings I took. One map I have shows a mine just north east of Wilbur, in the saddle between the long north ridge from Wilbur and small bump just north of town. There's another mine indicated along the north ridge. Both locations seem logical because you'd need fairly flat rail access from the main line, and you don't want to be below water level in such a swampy area or you'd need a substantial pump. (Yet no such pumps are listed in the Government report.)

The general swampiness of the area suggests that ridges like ones near Wilbur would be the most likely spots to discover and extract valuable ore. The Government report describes much valuable ore found all along the K&P up to and past Calabogie. Ridges like these are the most accessible features to survey and exploit in the area, given the technology and practical considerations of the day. The locals almost certainly know exactly where it is. Some more bushwhacking is in order!

One other thing: It was Lavant Station (not Wilbur) that was originally registered with the name "Iron City" when it was founded (and owned by) Boyd Caldwell in 1881. This point wasn't clear in the "Whisky and Wickedness" book I mentioned in an earlier post. Google Maps shows the K&P trail as "Iron City Road" at Lavant Station (highest magnification).

So why did these mines close? The market for iron collapsed and these far-flung sites simply couldn't be profitable given competition from mines and refineries in Pennsylvania, where there was also abundant coal for smelting.

Margot Hallam at the Lanark Archives has graciously offered to help me dig up information about the Caldwell mines. I'm also going to see what I can find from locals in the area. It would be neat to see what became of this bit of history and I'll post pics of what I find.