Drag to turn the globe

Mines/Canada

Giant Mine

Giant Mine, Canada. Closed, underground, mining gold, arsenic.

Why Giant Mine is famous

More than 50 years of gold mining left about 237,000 t of arsenic trioxide in five stopes and 11 chambers. Remediation began in 2021; the territorial page says it should finish by 2038 and the federal page says about 10 years.1,2,3

Story cards

Timeline

  1. 1992Giant Mine strike explosion4
  2. 1999Giant Mine passes to the federal government4

What kind of deposit

Orogenic gold (low-sulphide gold-quartz veins)

Giant Mine today

Where gold is mined todayMining in Canada

Where next

Events

Led toGiant Mine passes to the federal governmentRoyal Oak Mines went into receivership in 1999 and the federal government took over the site.4Led toGiant Mine strike explosionRead what happened near Giant Mine: Giant Mine strike explosion.1

Places

Located inYellowknifeGiant Mine is about 7 km from Yellowknife.1

Deposit types

An example ofOrogenic gold (low-sulphide gold-quartz veins)Giant Mine belongs to the orogenic gold family of deposits.5

Sources

  1. Giant Mine remediation Government of the Northwest Territories
  2. Giant Mine remediation project Government of Canada
  3. Wikidata entity Q1423887
  4. Giant Mine Historical Timeline Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada
  5. Mineral Deposit Models (Bulletin 1693, Cox and Singer, eds., 1986) US Geological Survey

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

Keep exploring

Stories with these minerals

The Super Pit gold mine at Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, at sunsetMining historyGold rushes, then and nowGold and lithium · WorldwideGold drill-hole columns over the Abitibi on a satellite map of QuébecData storyUnder QuébecDrill holes · QuébecAn underground loader carrying a full bucket of rock through a dark mine roomEquipmentUnderground mining equipmentUnderground · FleetHistory of miningGold fever: the rushes that filled continents1848-1900

All mining storiesThe world runs on rockAll mineralsMining by country

Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Super Pit, Kalgoorlie by Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0; Underground mining equipment by Kaupo Kikkas, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Gold prospectors constructing a long box with a filter for panning gold. Process print after H.M. Paget, 1899., Henry Marriott Paget (Public Domain Mark 1.0).