|
|
SELF-GUIDED TOUR
BUILDING DESCRIPTIONS
1 - Office: This buiding was originally the time office where miners punched in and out when they went underground and returned to surface.
2 - Hoistroom: The building houses the hoist which raised and lowered the cages in the two compartment shaft in the headframe. The interior can be viewed through the window - lights will come on automatically as you approach the window.
3 - Headframe: This building houses the shaft that accessed the underground workings as well as the ore bin where hoisted ore was dumped before going to the mill.
4 - Dry: This building was the change-room where miners changed from street clothes to work clothes. Wet work clothes were hung in baskets to dry between shifts.
5 - Compressor House: This building houses a compressor used to power pneumatic drills and mucking machines underground. Part of the building was also used as a workshop. The compressor can be viewed
ROCK DESCRIPTIONS
1 - Timiskaming Conglomerate: This is a sedimentary rock deposited by moving water in a river bed. Pebble layers=fast flowing, sandy layer=slow flowing.
2 - Green Carbonate: This is a local name for metamorphosed lava. It was black when it flowed from the volcano but was subject to intense natural forces that caused green chrome mica to form, imparting the green colour.
3 - Pillow Lava: This lava flowed under the ocean as small streams that sizzled when they came into contact with the cold water. The rims around the odd shapes are the result of the rapid chilling.
4 - Feldspar Porphyry: This rock came from magma that cooled very slowly deep inside a volcano, allowing time for both large crystals to grow.
5 - Matachewan Porphyry: This rock is a close cousin to the feldspar porphyry but the crystals are white due to their sodium content, whereas feldspar rich in potassium is pink.
6 - Core Car: Please feel free to take home a souvenir.
7 - Gowganda formation Conglomerate: This rock is much younger than the Timiskaming conglomerate noted above. Note the much larger, rounded rocks cemented in a fine-grained groundmass.
8 - Quartz: This is a piece of a quartz vein and is almost all silica. Many gold deposits are found in Quartz veins.
9 - Basalt: This rock is related to the pillow lava noted above. It was deposited in a submarine environment, flowing on to the ocean.
10 - Iron Formation: This rock is made up of sedimentary material derived from eroding volcanic rocks that were deposited in a shallow marine environment. The reddish bands are layers of magnetite, an iron mineral.
11 - Glomeroporphyritic diabase: This is another type of porphyry containing rounded masses of greenish feldspar.
12 - Mica Lamprophyre: This rock type commonly occurs as a crack filling a few metres thick. The sparkly bits are fine flakes of mica. This rock type has been known to carry small diamonds.
13 - Mica Lamprophyre: This larger specimen of Lamprophyre is a close cousin to Kimberlite, the host rock of most diamond mines.
14 - Diorite: This is a fine grained intrusive rock related to granite. The dark color is due to the high iron and magnesium mineral content.
15 - Limestone: This is a sedimentary rock formed in still water on the ocean floor. This is a soft rock high in calcium and is often made up of compressed fossil shells.
16 - Granite: This is a fine grained intrusive rock type that makes up most of the Canadian Shield. The light coloured minerals that form this rock are mostly feldspar and quartz.
17 - 18 - Granite Gneiss: This rock is highly metamorphosed granite that displays strong banding as a result of the metamorphic process. The rock was subjected to high heat and pressure that re-crystallized the original mineral grains.
ORE CAR DISPLAY
At the front of this display is a mucking machine (blasted ore is called muck, one who shovels muck is a mucker). This machine was powered by compressed air and was used to load an ore car parked behind it by lifting the bucket up and over itself to dump. One car was loaded and moved to a siding so another car could be moved behind the mucking machine for loading. The locomotive at the rear of the display shuttled the cars from the work area to the shaft for hoisting to surface where it was dumped into the ore bin and sent to the mill for processing.
|
The Toburn Operating Authority is a non-profit organization of volunteers from the community who have an interest in preserving the mining history and structures of Kirkland Lake's mining past.
|
|
|
|
History
