facing page top: Cobalt ‘s train station, 1922 bottom: Cobalt’s general store, built around headframe of mine shaft, 1962 this page: a map of the Cobalt Silver Camp showing ore production and dividends paid from various mines, 1913
courtesy of David K Joyce
Easy come easy go The silver began to run out in the late 1920’s. With World War II, the demand for cobalt, a by-product of silver extraction for which the town is named, increased. This kept mining operations active for a while, however eventually it too came to a close. Like other gold rush towns, today Cobalt struggles to keep this history alive, though there is little evidence of the mining camps except for the ghosts of headframe ruins dotting the surrounding landscape. Its remote location makes it too far off the beaten track for tourists and passers by to visit. The town nostalgically retells the story of its very proud past and recreates it in bits and pieces, in rock samples in museums, gem shops, galleries and books. But the silver and the town the discovery brought with it are long gone. Perhaps latent in our perceived value of the mineral is an appreciation for the earth’s time and energy spent in creating it. Upon discovery, claims are staked and the value we see is commodified and quickly put into motion. Its energy is dispersed into invention, industry, propelling an economy of its own — Cobalt’s short life was alive with innovation building the fortunes of many businessmen, banks and leaders of industry. The earth’s slow creation of the silver took millions of years. The silver veins in Cobalt were extracted from the earth in only a few.
Epilogue Like many a town hastily stripped of its valuable commodity the scars remain: voids where the silver veins were removed, open shafts, tailings and contaminated water. Acres of land were stripped of vegetation to expose silver veins near the surface. The trees have yet to re-surface. The land is left to rehabilitate itself – so few are the people left in Cobalt, no one seems to give much attention to the problem. Issues of environmental contamination and pollution of ground source waters, a fundamental by-product of mining, we leave to the earth to rehabilitate in its own slow process. The time and place of discovery is potent, but the rush is brief. The convalescence of the land will be long. c
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Cobalt Community Assist for an Urban Study Effort Study , 1995 Ontario Association of Architects Cobalt Mining Legacy : www.cobaltmininglegacy.ca Angus, Charles and Brit Griffin. We lived a life and then some: The Life, Death and Life of a Mining Town . Toronto: Between the Lines, 1996
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