You can get pickled at Pickle Lake. Then stagger over to the outcrop and fall asleep on your very own gold mine. If is a fact that more ounces were mined in the local bar than in the nearby stopes.
It keeps popping up now and then from the pickle barrel.
Typical of mining communities, the town has experienced a series of booms and busts. The first bust occurred in 1951, when the Central Patricia gold mine was closed. During its life, the mine produced 670,000 ounces of gold and supported a population of 400. After the closure of the mine, the population dwindled to 51 hearty individuals.
The Pickle Crow gold mine stopped production in 1966, bringing to an end the boom which had stared in 1935. Producing 1.5 million ounces of gold over its thirty-one year span, it was one of the richest producing mines in history. The fate of the community after the mine shut down was even more tragic than that of Central Patricia. In the early 1970's, the Ministry of Natural Resources, under orders to clean up all abandoned mine sites, burned the Pickle Crow town site to the ground, destroying the last remnants of an integral part of Ontario's history.
Pickle Lake boomed once again in 1974 with the construction of the Umex Thierry Mine. This time copper was mined, but the operation was shut down when changes in the base metals market made it unprofitable. The population, which reached a peak of 1,200 in 1981, dropped once again to around 400.
In 1956, Highway 599 finally made Pickle Lake accessible by road. Prior to this, freight was transported over the difficult terrain for 160 kilometers from the Canadian National Railroad line in Savant Lake and Sioux Lookout. This was achieved by a combination of horse teams on land and scows and barges across the waterways.
In 1987, after year of exploration activities, the community once again became a boomtown. Both Placer Dome Inc. and St. Joe Canada (Bond Gold) opened mines in the Pickle Lake area. Placer Dome constructed a mine at Dona Lake, 35 kilometers from the town of Pickle Lake. It closed its doors in 1994. Bond Gold's mine was 30 miles northwest of Pickle Lake and closed in 1995.
In 1996, Placer Dome Inc. opened Musselwhite Mine approximately 160 kilometers from the town of Pickle Lake. This mine is expected to produce well into the new millennium.
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