Top 3 Abandoned Places In Kirkland Lake

There are so many abandoned places in Kirkland Lake! This is a list of the top three abandoned places in Kirkland Lake. Browse through all abandoned places in Kirkland Lake

1. Adam's Mine

The Adams Mine was an open pit mine located 11 kilometres south of Kirkland Lake.

The mine began operations in 1963 and covered an area of 16 km. Six open-pits were in place; the largest pit standing at just over 1.6 km in length. The deepest pit was 600 feet deep which put it below the water table.

Blasting at the mine occured on a daily basis and led some geologists to claim that the result of which added natural fault lines to the rocks.

The Ontario Northland Railway (ONR) operated a spur line into the mine.

The Adams Mine mine closed in 1990.

Just before the mine's closure, waste management planners from the Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto were looking at the mine's potential for massive landfill. The landfill site would replace the Keele Valley Landfill in Vaughan which was rapidly nearing its capacity. Under a proposed plan, waste would be shipped north to the mine by containers aboard CN and Ontario Northland railway cars.

Supporters of the landfill idea felt the site would lead to economic activity in the Kirkland Lake area. Opponents of the landfill felt that the contaminants in the pit would work their way into the underground water supply as a result of the fractured rocks caused by years of blasting.

It was estimated that 90-95% of the area residents were opposed to the idea.

In 1995, Metro Toronto began a formal assessment, however the project was rejected on financial and environmental grounds in December of that year.

In 1996, the mine's owner, Notre Development, announced plans to revive the "Rail Cycle North" plan through the private sector.

On August 3, 2000, Toronto City Council voted to approve the plan to ship waste up to the Adam's Mine. After community outrage, council reviewed the issue and voted down the proposal. Toronto solved the issue by finally shipping their waste to the Carleton Farms Landfill in Michigan.

From 2001 to 2003, the owner of the mine Notre Development and the Rail Cycle North consortium continued to pursue avenues to revive the landfill proposal.

The debate was finally put to rest on June 17th, 2004 when the Adams Mine Lake Act was passed by a vote of 63 to 18. The Act, signed into law by the Lieutenant Governor, made the mine property strictly off-limits for waste storage. The Act also revoked all existing approvals pertaining to the project. The agreement went a step further and prohbited any legal action to be taken against the Ontario Government as a result of the legislation.

This came as bad news to the owner of the Adams Mine property. He was to be compensated for the purchase of the property, associated studies and tests, legal services, property taxes and government approval costs.

Today the mine remains very much the way it was left. Equipment fills the buildings, manuals and books sit on shelves and office equipment is still in place.

If you visit this location please leave it in the same way that you found it.

2. Dane (ghost town)

When the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway initially formed, its purpose was to allow settlers easier access to the fertile Northern Ontario farmland. That purpose changed during construction of the T&NO when gold and silver deposits were discovered, a discovery that attracting miners from across the world.

Small communities along the T&NO line began to spring to life. In 1906 one such settlement near Kirkland Lake was formed at a location 1.5 kilometres west of the T&NO railway line. The community was named Boston (after the nearby township). As was customary, the railway station would be given its own name. One proposed name was that of Jardine Station but it was discarded in favour of the name Dane, named after the T&NO Railway Commissioner Frederick Dane.

Dane contained a siding, flag station and J.J. Corbeil’s general store with post office. With nearby Larder Lake experiencing a gold rush, the government added the 12-mile Dane Road through the bush that joined Dane to Larder Lake.

As there was no railway leading to Larder Lake’s gold fields, Dane was the closest stop where passengers could disembark the train and board a stagecoach to the gold mines. The road further allowed freight companies to set up operations in Dane where they could ship in materials by railway and ship out materials by coach to the nearby mine camps.

As Dane’s population grew, a small schoolhouse was built (1908) as well as two hotels. Homes and boarding houses were built to accommodate the miners, prospectors and their families.

By 1909 the population reached almost 600 residents. When the Larder Lake gold rush subsided the following year, the population fell to approximately 200 residents.

In 1946 the name of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway was changed to the Ontario Northland Railway (ONR) due to confusion with an American rail line with the same initials.

Over the years, residents of Dane moved away to work in nearby gold mines or found other work and the settlement’s importance diminished. In 1958 the train station was dismantled and the school was closed.

In 1955 a large iron deposit was found just east of Dane and a mine was developed beginning in 1963 which would become the Adams Mine. The government constructed the five mile Highway 650 that lead from highway 112 to the site of the Adams Mine.

Production at Adams Mine began in 1964 but it wasn’t enough to sustain Dane’s future. By this time the last remaining hotel, the store and post office had closed. Today Dane consists of a handful of original homes and the pile of rubble which used to be the hotel (demolished in 2007).

Dane Road is located at the junction of highways 112 and 650. The original Dane was located where the ONR meets highway 650.

3. Russian Orthodox Church

I found this one day just driving into town. I work in Kirkland Lake everyday, and sadly i didn't have time to stop and investigate, but i will one of these days. I did manage to get a picture with my phone. You can also see this on google street view. It looks to be a TINY abandoned Russian Orthodox church right in the middle of a residential area. I've asked some locals, but they didn't even seem to know of it's existance.