The Gold Rush was a key event in Yukon’s post-contact history. While “The Klondike” and the gold panner still appear on our licence plates today, we often forget that Whitehorse had its own mining boom too... or actually, several mining booms based on copper instead of gold.
Understanding Whitehorse’s mining past is important for making the best decisions today for our children tomorrow in the climate-changed world we are leaving them.
Whitehorse in 1900 was a small intermodal stopover point for those en route to bigger action farther north. Some who had not made their fortunes in Dawson decided to see what they could find here. They quickly mapped out the Whitehorse Copper Belt, a band of rocky outcrops curving 30 kilometres around the west side of Whitehorse from the current landfill down to Mary Lake. These early entrepreneurs staked the area and copper mines appeared.
Some of these mines actually moved into production but there were no guarantees. The Copper King Mine under what is now Raven’s Ridge was the first to ship while the Copper Queen right next door turned up nothing.
The Pueblo Mine just off the Fish Lake Road was the most successful. It sent out ore via the Copper Mines Branch railway that went down what is now the Copper Haul Road and joined the White Pass mainline at MacRae.
But Whitehorse in the early 1900s was a long way from the nearest smelters in BC and the northwestern United States. Mining mechanization was in its infancy and these mines required much pick and shovel work. The miners sorted ore by hand, putting promising chunks into bags for shipment south while discarding the rest in adjacent waste rock piles. Profit margins were low and the mines opened or closed according to the price of copper.
When the copper price fell at the end of the First World War, all the mines around Whitehorse closed and White Pass abandoned the branchline that served them.
Exploration companies returned to Whitehorse in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s looking for more copper with newer equipment and increasingly modern techniques. They explored the Copper Belt once again, finding the best promise in the same areas that had seen mining activity before 1920. Finally by the mid-1950s, Imperial Mines and Metals (later New Imperial Mines) found enough copper of sufficient grade to justify a new mining venture here. Even so, moving to the point of an operating mine took more than a decade. Operations started only in 1967.
The ore came initially from two places near Mary Lake, an area on the Mount Mac Road, and the site of Sam McGee’s mine near our current landfill. The Little Chief pit just off the Mount Sima Road also produced a lot. The company built the Copper Haul Road for trucks to transport ore from the remote open pits to the mill centrally located near Little Chief.
On startup, the company employed 95 workers in three shifts. It was a significant contributor to the economy of Whitehorse, which had a population of 6,000 in 1967. The concentrated output from the mill went by truck a short distance to Utah Yard where it was transloaded onto railway cars for shipment to Skagway.
The non-oxidized sulphide nature of the copper ore meant that it could be concentrated using a flotation process at the mill, no heap leaching required. Furthermore, the tailings (finely ground waste) from the mill contained the right concentration of limestone to neutralize the acid content in the original rock.
By 1972, mining had exhausted the supply of copper from the open pits. After some financial reorganization, New Imperial Mills became Whitehorse Copper and focused its efforts on a new underground mine near the mill. That required a vertical shaft almost 400 metres deep and a 1.6 kilometre decline (slanted tunnel) for moving wheeled vehicles to and from the surface.
The mining prospects in Whitehorse looked bright in the 1970s. The City of Whitehorse expanded its boundaries specifically to include the promising parts of the Copper Belt and optimistically well beyond. Today that gives Whitehorse one of the lowest population densities in Canada: we have relatively few people in a very large area, much of which is undeveloped.
The expanded city limits included mining areas west of Mary Lake because copper reserves there were still not depleted. Some time in that same period, Whitehorse Copper examined Cowley Park, an area just outside the city, south of the current Cowley Creek subdivision. Exploration had uncovered copper there in the 1950s. Whitehorse Copper took a bulk sample from the surface to do a test run through the mill but decided that the economics of the day did not justify further attention to Cowley Park just then.
By 1982, Whitehorse Copper had about 200 employees from a Whitehorse population of 15,000. A third of its revenue was from unexpected gold that came out with the copper. However, an economic recession that year forced Whitehorse Copper and all other Yukon mines to close. The White Pass railway ceased operation at that time.
While the mine ended, interest in copper did not. In the 43 years since closure, Coyne and Sons, a Whitehorse-based company, acquired and consolidated claims throughout the Copper Belt. That included areas where Whitehorse Copper had found copper but had not mined it all. Kluane Drilling, a Coyne-owned company, has drilled in various locations over the years, including at Cowley Park.
At the same time, mitigation of climate change by moving more toward electric power has driven new demand for copper even as the world supply of that metal decreases. That has put copper on Canada’s list of critical minerals.
Unsurprisingly, the intersection of climate change with Copper Belt history resulted in renewed interest in copper around Whitehorse. Gladiator Metals, with cooperation and investment by Coyne, started an exploration program in 2023, which is ongoing. This involves re-examining cores from the many historical holes drilled over the years, diamond drilling new exploratory holes, aerial remote sensing, and advanced computer modelling.
Where are they looking? Naturally enough, they have started where copper is known to exist: Cowley Park, partially mined areas west of Mary Lake, a previously mined area off the Mount Mac Road, and the area of the Little Chief mine. Armed with new techniques that have evolved over the last 40-plus years, Gladiator’s initial findings are promising and they are searching at other locations up and down the Copper Haul Road as well. Their application for Class 3 exploration activities is currently before the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board (YESAB).
The question that Gladiator wishes to answer is this: “Does the Whitehorse Copper Belt contain copper in sufficient quantity and quality to support a feasible mine?”
The second part of this article will explore what the answer to that question really means for Yukon in the short and long term.
Tim Green is a somewhat-retired engineer who has studied the history of the Whitehorse Copper Belt. He uses old documents and modern technology to guide onsite visits to mining locations.
