112-670: Depot Harbour is a ghost town on Wasauksing First Nation , in the Parry Sound District , Ontario , Canada. It was once the western terminus of the Canada Atlantic Railway and a busy port on Georgian Bay . In 1891, the Ottawa, Arnprior and Renfrew Railway and the Ottawa and Parry Sound Railway, two lines controlled by John Rudolphus Booth , amalgamated to form the Ottawa, Arnprior and Parry Sound Railway with authority to execute
224-420: A "bust" (e.g., catastrophic resource price collapse). A gold rush often brought intensive but short-lived economic activity to a remote village, only to leave a ghost town once the resource was depleted. Boomtowns can often decrease in size as quickly as they grew. Sometimes, all, or nearly all, of the population can desert the town, resulting in a ghost town. The dismantling of a boomtown can often occur on
336-516: A 33% to 40% recovery of magnetite by weight, to produce a concentrate grading in excess of 64% iron by weight. The typical magnetite iron ore concentrate has less than 0.1% phosphorus , 3–7% silica , and less than 3% aluminium . As of 2019, magnetite iron ore is mined in Minnesota and Michigan in the United States , eastern Canada , and northern Sweden . Magnetite-bearing banded iron formation
448-684: A benchmark to be followed by the rest of the industry. Singapore Mercantile Exchange (SMX) has launched the world's first global iron ore futures contract, based on the Metal Bulletin Iron Ore Index (MBIOI) which uses daily price data from a broad spectrum of industry participants and independent Chinese steel consultancy and data provider Shanghai Steelhome's widespread contact base of steel producers and iron ore traders across China. The futures contract has seen monthly volumes over 1,500,000 t (1,500,000 long tons; 1,700,000 short tons) after eight months of trading. This move follows
560-452: A cottage. The port is still in use as a fish farm , owned by a local resident on the reserve. 45°18′51″N 80°06′22″W / 45.31417°N 80.10611°W / 45.31417; -80.10611 Ghost town A ghost town , deserted city , extinct town , or abandoned city is an abandoned settlement, usually one that contains substantial visible remaining buildings and infrastructure such as roads. A town often becomes
672-676: A further amalgamation with the Parry Sound Colonization Railway . The PSCR was acquired in 1893, forming a railway that would run from Georgian Bay through southern Algonquin Park to Ottawa. When the PSCR was taken over by Booth, the original intention was to have its terminus at Parry Sound . However, the high prices demanded by local landowners prompted him in 1895 to choose a location on nearby Parry Island , 10 kilometres (6 miles) away. Early that year, Booth's surveyors trespassed on
784-842: A ghost town because the economic activity that supported it (usually industrial or agricultural) has failed or ended for any reason (e.g. a host ore deposit exhausted by mining ). The town may have also declined because of natural or human-caused disasters such as floods , prolonged droughts, extreme heat or extreme cold, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, pollution, or nuclear and radiation-related accidents and incidents . The term can sometimes refer to cities, towns, and neighborhoods that, though still populated, are significantly less so than in past years; for example, those affected by high levels of unemployment and dereliction. Some ghost towns, especially those that preserve period-specific architecture, have become tourist attractions. Some examples are Bannack, Montana and Oatman, Arizona in
896-499: A one-room schoolhouse. Another example of infrastructure remaining is the former town of Weston, Illinois , that voted itself out of existence and turned the land over for construction of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory . Many houses and even a few barns remain, used for housing visiting scientists and storing maintenance equipment, while roads that used to cross through the site have been blocked off at
1008-586: A part in the abandonment of settlements within Europe. Two examples are Pripyat and Chernobyl . After the Chernobyl disaster of 1986, both cities were evacuated due to dangerous radiation levels within the area. As of today, Pripyat remains completely abandoned, and Chernobyl has around 500 remaining inhabitants. Another example is Todoque in the Canary Islands, Spain. During the 2021 Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption ,
1120-444: A planned basis. Mining companies nowadays will create a temporary company town to service a mine site, building all the accommodations, shops and services required, and then remove them once the resource has been extracted. Modular buildings can be used to facilitate the process. In some cases, multiple factors may remove the economic basis for a community; some former mining towns on U.S. Route 66 suffered both mine closures when
1232-424: A premium price. Due to the high density of hematite relative to associated silicate gangue, hematite beneficiation usually involves a combination of beneficiation techniques. One method relies on passing the finely-crushed ore over a slurry containing magnetite or other agent such as ferrosilicon which increases its density. When the density of the slurry is properly calibrated, the hematite will sink and
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#17328845410781344-448: A recent economic and holiday population surge. Another town, Sungai Lembing , Malaysia, was almost deserted due to closure of a tin mine in 1986 was revived in 2001 and has become a tourist destination since then. Foncebadón , a village in León , Spain, that was mostly abandoned and only inhabited by a mother and son, is slowly being revived owing to the ever-increasing stream of pilgrims on
1456-453: A relatively low-grade ore, they are also inexpensive to collect, as they do not have to be mined. Because of this, companies such as Magnetation have started reclamation projects where they use iron ore tailings as a source of metallic iron. The two main methods of recycling iron from iron ore tailings are magnetizing roasting and direct reduction. Magnetizing roasting uses temperatures between 700 and 900 °C (1,292 and 1,652 °F) for
1568-434: A result of a natural or human-made disaster or other causes; they restrict the term to settlements that were deserted because they were no longer economically viable. Some believe that any settlement with visible tangible remains should not be called a ghost town; others say, conversely, that a ghost town should contain the tangible remains of buildings. Whether or not the settlement must be completely deserted, or may contain
1680-422: A shift towards fly-in fly-out arrangements over building a company town , in order to avoid the development of ghost towns once a mining resource has been fully extracted. The Middle East has many ghost towns and ruins that were created when the shifting of politics or the fall of empires caused capital cities to be socially or economically unviable, such as Ctesiphon . The rise of real-estate speculation and
1792-420: A small population, is also a matter for debate. Generally, though, the term is used in a looser sense, encompassing any and all of these definitions. American author Lambert Florin defined a ghost town as "a shadowy semblance of a former self." Factors leading to the abandonment of towns include depleted natural resources, economic activity shifting elsewhere, railroads and roads bypassing or no longer accessing
1904-600: A source of iron ore. Prior to the industrial revolution, most iron was obtained from widely-available goethite or bog ore , for example, during the American Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars . Historically, much of the iron ore utilized by industrialized societies has been mined from predominantly hematite deposits with grades of around 70% Fe. These deposits are commonly referred to as "direct shipping ores" or "natural ores". Increasing iron ore demand, coupled with
2016-634: A string of ghost towns in areas such as the Solana Valley . Traditional agricultural practices such as sheep and goat rearing, on which the mountain village economy was based, were not taken over by the local youth, especially after the lifestyle changes that swept over rural Spain during the second half of the 20th century. Examples for ghost towns in Italy include the medieval village of Fabbriche di Careggine near Lago di Vagli , in province of Lucca , in Tuscany ,
2128-597: A switch to index-based quarterly pricing by the world's three largest iron ore miners— Vale , Rio Tinto , and BHP —in early 2010, breaking a 40-year tradition of benchmark annual pricing. Iron is the most abundant element on earth but not in the crust. The extent of the accessible iron ore reserves is not known, though Lester Brown of the Worldwatch Institute suggested in 2006 that iron ore could run out within 64 years (that is, by 2070), based on 2% growth in demand per year. Geoscience Australia calculates that
2240-418: A time of under 1 hour to produce an iron concentrate (Fe 3 O 4 ) to be used for iron smelting. For magnetizing roasting, it is important to have a reducing atmosphere to prevent oxidization and the formation of Fe 2 O 3 because it is harder to separate as it is less magnetic. Direct reduction uses hotter temperatures of over 1,000 °C (1,830 °F) and longer times of 2–5 hours. Direct reduction
2352-464: A town's life. In 1944, occupying German Waffen-SS troops murdered almost the entire population of the French village Oradour-sur-Glane . A new settlement was built nearby after the war, but the old town was left depopulated on the orders of President Charles de Gaulle , as a permanent memorial. In Germany, numerous smaller towns and villages in the former eastern territories were completely destroyed in
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#17328845410782464-655: A typically titanium -bearing magnetite, often with vanadium . These ores form a niche market, with specialty smelters used to recover the iron, titanium, and vanadium. These ores are beneficiated essentially similarly to banded iron formation ores, but usually are more easily upgraded via crushing and screening . The typical titanomagnetite concentrate grades 57% Fe, 12% Ti, and 0.5% V 2 O 5 . For every one ton of iron ore concentrate produced, approximately 2.5–3.0 tons of iron ore tailings will be discharged. Statistics show that there are 130 million tons of iron ore tailings discharged every year. If, for example,
2576-632: A value of $ 2.3 billion. 46% of Canada's iron ore comes from the Iron Ore Company of Canada mine, in Labrador City , Newfoundland , with secondary sources including the Mary River Mine in Nunavut . According to the U.S. Geological Survey's 2021 Report on iron ore, India is estimated to produce 59,000,000 t (58,000,000 long tons; 65,000,000 short tons) of iron ore in 2020, placing it as
2688-511: Is a high-volume, low-margin business, as the value of iron is significantly lower than base metals. It is highly capital intensive, and requires significant investment in infrastructure such as rail in order to transport the ore from the mine to a freight ship. For these reasons, iron ore production is concentrated in the hands of a few major players. World production averages 2,000,000,000 t (2.0 × 10 long tons; 2.2 × 10 short tons) of raw ore annually. The world's largest producer of iron ore
2800-428: Is expected to rise by a CAGR of 2% between 2023 and 2027, and industry analyst Fitch Solutions forecasted in 2021 that Brazil's annual production will reach 592,000,000 t (583,000,000 long tons; 653,000,000 short tons) by 2030. In 2017, Canadian iron ore mines produced 49,000,000 t (48,000,000 long tons; 54,000,000 short tons) of iron ore in concentrate pellets and 13.6 million tons of crude steel. Of
2912-510: Is followed by Japan and Korea, which consume a significant amount of raw iron ore and metallurgical coal . In 2006, China produced 588,000,000 t (579,000,000 long tons; 648,000,000 short tons) of iron ore, with an annual growth of 38%. Over the last 40 years, iron ore prices have been decided in closed-door negotiations between the small handful of miners and steelmakers which dominate both spot and contract markets. Until 2006, prices were determined in annual benchmark negotiations between
3024-586: Is in the iron ranges around Lake Superior . These iron ranges occur in Minnesota and Michigan, which combined accounted for 93% of the usable iron ore produced in the United States in 2014. Seven of the nine operational open pit mines in the United States are located in Minnesota as well as two of the three tailings reclamation operations. The other two active open pit mines were located in Michigan . In 2016, one of
3136-693: Is mined extensively in Brazil as of 2019, which exports significant quantities to Asia , and there is a nascent and large magnetite iron ore industry in Australia . Direct-shipping iron ore (DSO) deposits (typically composed of hematite ) are currently exploited on all continents except Antarctica , with the largest intensity in South America , Australia, and Asia. Most large hematite iron ore deposits are sourced from altered banded iron formations and (rarely) igneous accumulations. DSO deposits are typically rarer than
3248-471: Is now home to more than four million people. Wars and rebellions in some African countries have left many towns and villages deserted. Since 2003, when President François Bozizé came to power, thousands of citizens of the Central African Republic have been forced to flee their homes as a result of the escalating conflict between armed rebels and government troops. Villages accused of supporting
3360-456: Is the raw material used to make pig iron , which is one of the main raw materials to make steel —98% of the mined iron ore is used to make steel. In 2011 the Financial Times quoted Christopher LaFemina, mining analyst at Barclays Capital, saying that iron ore is "more integral to the global economy than any other commodity, except perhaps oil ". Metallic iron is virtually unknown on
3472-476: Is the Brazilian mining corporation Vale , followed by Australian companies Rio Tinto Group and BHP . A further Australian supplier, Fortescue Metals Group Ltd, has helped bring Australia's production to first in the world. The seaborne trade in iron ore—that is, iron ore to be shipped to other countries—was 849,000,000 t (836,000,000 long tons; 936,000,000 short tons) in 2004. Australia and Brazil dominate
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3584-425: Is used to produce sponge iron (Fe) to be used for steel-making. Direct reduction requires more energy, as the temperatures are higher and the time is longer and it requires more reducing agent than magnetizing roasting. Lower-grade sources of iron ore generally require beneficiation , using techniques like crushing, milling , gravity or heavy media separation , screening, and silica froth flotation to improve
3696-460: The Sperrgebiet ("forbidden zone"), effectively criminalizing new settlement. The small mining towns of this area, among them Pomona , Elizabeth Bay and Kolmanskop , were exempt from this ban, but the denial of new land claims soon rendered all of them ghost towns. The town of Dhanushkodi , India is a ghost town. It was destroyed during the 1964 Rameswaram cyclone and remains uninhabited in
3808-464: The Chernobyl disaster of 1986, dangerously high levels of nuclear contamination escaped into the surrounding area, and nearly 200 towns and villages in Ukraine and neighbouring Belarus were evacuated, including the cities of Pripyat and Chernobyl . The area was so contaminated that many of the evacuees were never permitted to return to their homes. Pripyat is the most famous of these abandoned towns; it
3920-878: The Chichester Range , the Hamersley Range and Koolyanobbing , Western Australia . Other types of ore are coming to the fore recently, such as oxidised ferruginous hardcaps, for instance laterite iron ore deposits near Lake Argyle in Western Australia. The total recoverable reserves of iron ore in India are about 9,602,000,000 t (9.450 × 10 long tons; 1.0584 × 10 short tons) of hematite and 3,408,000,000 t (3.354 × 10 long tons; 3.757 × 10 short tons) of magnetite . Chhattisgarh , Madhya Pradesh , Karnataka , Jharkhand , Odisha , Goa , Maharashtra , Andhra Pradesh , Kerala , Rajasthan , and Tamil Nadu are
4032-598: The Earth 's surface except as iron-nickel alloys from meteorites and very rare forms of deep mantle xenoliths . Although iron is the fourth-most abundant element in the Earth's crust , composing about 5%, the vast majority is bound in silicate or, more rarely, carbonate minerals, and smelting pure iron from these minerals would require a prohibitive amount of energy. Therefore, all sources of iron used by human industry exploit comparatively rarer iron oxide minerals, primarily hematite . Prehistoric societies used laterite as
4144-516: The Great Depression , contributed to a loss of importance for Depot Harbour, and the CNR closed the facilities in favour of its own at South Parry. The town fell into disrepair and as its population gradually declined, Depot Harbour was abandoned. During World War II , cordite manufactured in nearby Nobel was stored in the railway's dockside freight sheds across the inlet from the grain elevators. In
4256-557: The Indian reserve to run lines from Rose Point Narrows to the site. Taking advantage of a provision of the Indian Act that allowed native-owned land to be expropriated for use as a railway, he pressured the Anishinaabe reserve to sell 127 hectares (314 acres) to the railway. A further 45 hectares (111 acres) was acquired by expropriation in 1899. When completed, Depot Harbour became one of
4368-684: The Interstate highway system replaced the railroads as the favored means of transportation. Ghost towns are common in mining or mill towns in all the western states, and many eastern and southern states as well. Residents are compelled to leave in search of more productive areas when the resources that had created an employment boom in these towns were eventually exhausted. Sometimes a ghost town consists of many abandoned buildings as in Bodie, California , or standing ruins as in Rhyolite, Nevada , while elsewhere only
4480-581: The National Register of Historic Places . Starting in 2002, an attempt to declare an official ghost town in California stalled when the adherents of the town of Bodie and those of Calico , in Southern California , could not agree on the most deserving settlement for the recognition. A compromise was eventually reached—Bodie became the official state gold rush ghost town, while Calico was named
4592-555: The Pilbara region of Western Australia is approximately 844,000,000 t (831,000,000 long tons; 930,000,000 short tons) per year and rising. Gavin Mudd ( RMIT University ) and Jonathon Law ( CSIRO ) expect it to be gone within 30–50 years and 56 years, respectively. These 2010 estimates require ongoing review to take into account shifting demand for lower-grade iron ore and improving mining and recovery techniques (allowing deeper mining below
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4704-576: The Stanford Battle Area , were commandeered by the War Office for use as training grounds for British and US troops. Although this was intended to be a temporary measure, the residents were never allowed to return, and the villages have been used for military training ever since. Three miles or 5 km southeast of Imber is Copehill Down , a deserted village purpose-built for training in urban warfare . Disasters & natural disasters have played
4816-525: The debris had been cleared away from the site of the burnt-down grain elevators, the wharf was used as a distribution terminal for the Century Coal Company, a subsidiary of Canada Steamship Lines . As the market for coal declined in the late 1950s the docks were silenced once again. By 1959 use of the wharf was acquired by National Steel Corporation for loading pelletized iron ore from its Low Phos Mine at Sellwood . A rail mounted gantry crane
4928-407: The silicate mineral fragments will float and can be removed. Iron is the world's most commonly used metal—steel, of which iron ore is the key ingredient, represents almost 95% of all metal used per year. It is used primarily in structures, ships, automobiles, and machinery. Iron-rich rocks are common worldwide, but ore-grade commercial mining operations are dominated by the countries listed in
5040-420: The 13,600,000 t (13,400,000 long tons; 15,000,000 short tons) of steel 7,000,000 t (6,900,000 long tons; 7,700,000 short tons) was exported, and 43,100,000 t (42,400,000 long tons; 47,500,000 short tons) of iron ore was exported at a value of $ 4.6 billion. Of the iron ore exported, 38.5% of the volume was iron ore pellets with a value of $ 2.3 billion, and 61.5% was iron ore concentrates with
5152-680: The 62–64% Fe range. Granite and ultrapotassic igneous rocks were sometimes used to segregate magnetite crystals and form masses of magnetite suitable for economic concentration. A few iron ore deposits, notably in Chile , are formed from volcanic flows containing significant accumulations of magnetite phenocrysts . Chilean magnetite iron ore deposits within the Atacama Desert have also formed alluvial accumulations of magnetite in streams leading from these volcanic formations. Some magnetite skarn and hydrothermal deposits have been worked in
5264-818: The U.S. when NASA acquired land to construct the John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC), a rocket testing facility in Hancock County, Mississippi (on the Mississippi side of the Pearl River , which is the Mississippi – Louisiana state line). This required NASA to acquire a large (approximately 34-square-mile or 88-square-kilometre) buffer zone because of the loud noise and potential dangers associated with testing such rockets. Five thinly populated rural Mississippi communities (Gainesville, Logtown, Napoleon, Santa Rosa, and Westonia), plus
5376-429: The United States is estimated to have accounted for 2% of the world's iron ore output. In the United States there are twelve iron ore mines, with nine being open pit mines and three being reclamation operations. There were also ten pelletizing plants, nine concentration plants, two direct-reduced iron (DRI) plants, and one iron nugget plant that were operating in 2014. In the United States the majority of iron ore mining
5488-545: The United States, and Canada, where housing is often used as an investment rather than for habitation. Railroads and roads bypassing or no longer reaching a town can also create a ghost town. This was the case in many of the ghost towns along Ontario's historic Opeongo Line , and along U.S. Route 66 after motorists bypassed the latter on the faster moving highways I-44 and I-40 . Some ghost towns were founded along railways where steam trains would stop at periodic intervals for repairs or to take on water. Amboy, California ,
5600-756: The United States; Barkerville, British Columbia in Canada; Craco and Pompeii in Italy; Aghdam in Azerbaijan; Kolmanskop in Namibia; Pripyat and Chernobyl in Ukraine; Dhanushkodi in India; Fordlândia in Brazil and Villa Epecuén in Argentina. T. Lindsey Baker, author of Ghost Towns of Texas , defines a ghost town as "a town for which the reason for being no longer exists." Some writers discount settlements that were abandoned as
5712-406: The aftermath. Many abandoned towns and settlements in the former Soviet Union were established near Gulag labour camps to supply necessary services. Since most of these camps were abandoned in the 1950s, the towns were abandoned as well. One such town is located near the former Gulag camp called Butugychag (also called Lower Butugychag). Other towns were deserted due to deindustrialisation and
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#17328845410785824-411: The concentration of the ore and remove impurities. The results, high-quality fine ore powders, are known as fines. Magnetite is magnetic , and hence easily separated from the gangue minerals and capable of producing a high-grade concentrate with very low levels of impurities. The grain size of the magnetite and its degree of commingling with the silica groundmass determine the grind size to which
5936-533: The country's " economic demonstrated resources " of iron currently amount to 24 gigatonnes , or 24,000,000,000 t (2.4 × 10 long tons; 2.6 × 10 short tons). Another estimate places Australia's reserves of iron ore at 52,000,000,000 t (5.1 × 10 long tons; 5.7 × 10 short tons), or 30% of the world's estimated 170,000,000,000 t (1.7 × 10 long tons; 1.9 × 10 short tons), of which Western Australia accounts for 28,000,000,000 t (2.8 × 10 long tons; 3.1 × 10 short tons). The current production rate from
6048-508: The country, were wiped out due to the Great Famine in the latter half of the 19th century, and the years of economic decline that followed. Catastrophic environmental damage caused by long-term contamination can also create a ghost town. Some notable examples are Times Beach, Missouri , whose residents were exposed to a high level of dioxins , and Wittenoom, Western Australia , which was once Australia's largest source of blue asbestos , but
6160-584: The depletion of high-grade hematite ores in the United States, led after World War II to the development of lower-grade iron ore sources, principally the use of magnetite and taconite . Iron ore mining methods vary by the type of ore being mined. There are four main types of iron ore deposits worked currently, depending on the mineralogy and geology of the ore deposits. These are magnetite, titanomagnetite , massive hematite, and pisolitic ironstone deposits. The origin of iron can be ultimately traced to its formation through nuclear fusion in stars, and most of
6272-481: The deserted mountain village Craco located in Basilicata , which has served as a filming location, and the ghost village Roveraia, in the municipality of Loro Ciuffenna , in province of Arezzo , situated near Pratovalle . During World War II it was an important partisan base and it was definitively abandoned in the 1980s, when the last family who lived here, left the village. . Two projects have been proposed for
6384-725: The development of ghost towns. Tyneham , in Dorset , was requisitioned for military exercises during the Second World War , and remains unpopulated, being littered with unexploded munitions from regular shelling. A few ghost towns have managed to get a second life, and this happens through a variety of reasons. One of these reasons is heritage tourism generating a new economy able to support residents. For example, Walhalla, Victoria , Australia, became almost deserted after its gold mine ceased operation in 1914, but owing to its accessibility and proximity to other attractive locations, it has had
6496-624: The economic crises of the early 1990s attributed to post-Soviet conflicts – one example being Tkvarcheli in Georgia, a coal mining town that suffered a drastic population decline as a result of the War in Abkhazia in the early 1990s. Although in 2010s Chinese ghost cities became a frequent feature of discourse regarding China's economy and urbanization , under-occupied cities filled up. Writing in 2023, academic and former UK diplomat Kerry Brown described
6608-410: The edges of the property, with gatehouses or barricades to prevent unsupervised access. Construction of dams has produced ghost towns that have been left underwater. Examples include: Some towns become deserted when their populations were massacred , deported, or expelled. Examples include Kayaköy, an ancient Greek city abandoned in 1923 as result of population exchange between Greece and Turkey and
6720-431: The entire population to flee. Upon seizing the city, Armenian forces destroyed much of the town to discourage Azerbaijanis from returning. More damage occurred in the following decades when locals looted the abandoned town for building materials. It is currently almost entirely ruined and uninhabited. Natural and human-made disasters can create ghost towns. For example, after being flooded more than 30 times since their town
6832-500: The foundations of former buildings remain as in Graysonia, Arkansas . Old mining camps that have lost most of their population at some stage of their history such as Aspen , Deadwood , Oatman , Tombstone and Virginia City are sometimes referred to as ghost towns although they are presently active towns and cities. Many U.S. ghost towns, such as South Pass City in Wyoming are listed on
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#17328845410786944-442: The gangue is separated during the beneficiation process and is removed as tailings . Taconite tailings are mostly the mineral quartz , which is chemically inert. This material is stored in large, regulated water settling ponds. The key parameters for magnetite ore being economic are the crystallinity of the magnetite, the grade of the iron within the banded iron formation host rock, and the contaminant elements which exist within
7056-789: The groundwater table). Brazil is the second-largest producer of iron ore after Australia, accounting for 16% of the world's iron ore production. After a somewhat sluggish production volume 2010-2020, partly due to the Mariana dam disaster in 2015 and the Brumadinho dam disaster in 2019, which halted the production at the two involved mines, production has increased steadily since 2021, when Brazil produced 431,000,000 t (424,000,000 long tons; 475,000,000 short tons). In 2022 it increased to 435,000,000 t (428,000,000 long tons; 480,000,000 short tons) and in 2023 to 440,000,000 t (430,000,000 long tons; 490,000,000 short tons). The Brazilian production
7168-578: The idea of Chinese ghost cities as a popular bandwagon which was shown to be a myth. The town of Namie , along with several other towns in Fukushima Prefecture , Japan, was temporarily evacuated as a result of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster following the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami . Following ongoing decontamination works, several portions of Namie have been fully reopened to residents, allowing reconstruction and renovation of
7280-450: The iron and carbon smelting must be kept in an oxygen-deficient (reducing) state to promote the burning of carbon to produce CO and not CO 2 . The inclusion of even small amounts of some elements can have profound effects on the behavioral characteristics of a batch of iron or the operation of a smelter. These effects can be both good and bad, some catastrophically bad. Some chemicals are deliberately added, such as flux, which makes
7392-413: The iron from the oxygen, a stronger elemental bond must be presented to attach to the oxygen. Carbon is used because the strength of a carbon-oxygen bond is greater than that of the iron-oxygen bond at high temperatures. Thus, the iron ore must be powdered and mixed with coke , to be burnt in the smelting process. Carbon monoxide is the primary ingredient of chemically stripping oxygen from iron. Thus,
7504-889: The iron is thought to have originated in dying stars that are large enough to explode as supernovae . The Earth's core is thought to consist mainly of iron, but this is inaccessible from the surface. Some iron meteorites are thought to have originated from asteroids 1,000 km (620 mi) in diameter or larger. Banded iron formations (BIFs) are sedimentary rocks containing more than 15% iron composed predominantly of thinly-bedded iron minerals and silica (as quartz ). Banded iron formations occur exclusively in Precambrian rocks, and are commonly weakly-to-intensely metamorphosed . Banded iron formations may contain iron in carbonates ( siderite or ankerite ) or silicates ( minnesotaite , greenalite , or grunerite ), but in those mined as iron ores, oxides ( magnetite or hematite ) are
7616-519: The last two years of the war. These territories later became part of Poland and the Soviet Union , and many of the smaller settlements were never rebuilt or repopulated, for example Kłomino ( Westfalenhof ), Pstrąże ( Pstransse ), and Janowa Góra ( Johannesberg ). Some villages in England were also abandoned during the war, but for different reasons. Imber , on Salisbury Plain , and several villages in
7728-601: The locality was severely affected. Hundreds of buildings were destroyed, including the parish Church of Saint Pius X, the health center, the headquarters of the neighborhood association, the School of Early Childhood Education, and Los Campitos Elementary School and the Todoque Elementary and the Infant Education School, and by October 10, new lava flows destroyed the remaining buildings that were still standing, leaving
7840-423: The magnetite concentrate. The size and strip ratio of most magnetite resources is irrelevant, as a banded iron formation can be hundreds of meters thick, extend hundreds of kilometers along strike , and can easily come to more than three billion or more tonnes of contained ore. The typical grade of iron at which a magnetite-bearing banded iron formation becomes economic is roughly 25% iron, which can generally yield
7952-476: The magnetite-bearing BIF or other rocks which form its main source, or protolith rock, but are considerably cheaper to mine and process as they require less beneficiation due to the higher iron content. However, DSO ores can contain significantly higher concentrations of penalty elements, typically being higher in phosphorus, water content (especially pisolite sedimentary accumulations), and aluminium ( clays within pisolites). Export-grade DSO ores are generally in
8064-399: The main iron ore producers ( BHP Billiton , Rio Tinto , and Vale S.A. ) and Japanese importers. In 2006, Chinese company Baosteel began handling negotiations for the importer side. The Chinese government replaced Baosteel with China Iron and Steel Association as lead negotiator in 2009. Traditionally, the first deal reached between these the major producers and the major importers sets
8176-410: The mine tailings contain an average of approximately 11% iron, there would be approximately 1.41 million tons of iron wasted annually. These tailings are also high in other useful metals such as copper , nickel , and cobalt , and they can be used for road-building materials like pavement and filler and building materials such as cement, low-grade glass, and wall materials. While tailings are
8288-471: The most notable are Anyox , Kitsault , and Ocean Falls . Some ghost towns have revived their economies and populations due to historical and eco-tourism, such as Barkerville ; once the largest town north of Kamloops , it is now a year-round provincial museum. In Quebec, Val-Jalbert is a well-known tourist ghost town; founded in 1901 around a mechanical pulp mill that became obsolete when paper mills began to break down wood fibre by chemical means, it
8400-686: The most prominent ports on the Great Lakes , rivalling Collingwood , Midland and Owen Sound . It was the shortest route for shipping grain to the Atlantic , with trains arriving and departing every twenty minutes, and was known as the best natural harbour on the Great Lakes. Booth built a town site with 110 houses, along with two large grain elevators , docks, a railway station, a hotel and shops. The town's population reached 1,600 permanent residents in 1926. There may have been as many as 3,000 inhabitants in
8512-514: The nation's second-largest city with 1 million people, was a village of only a few thousand people before colonization. Alexandria , the second-largest city of Egypt, was a flourishing city in the Ancient era, but declined during the Middle Ages. It underwent a dramatic revival during the 19th century; from a population of 5,000 in 1806, it grew into a city of more than 200,000 inhabitants by 1882, and
8624-464: The northern portion of a sixth ( Pearlington ), along with 700 families in residence, had to be completely relocated away from the facility. Sometimes the town might cease to officially exist, but the physical infrastructure remains. For example, the five Mississippi communities that had to be abandoned to build SSC still have remnants of those communities within the facility itself. These include city streets, now overgrown with forest flora and fauna, and
8736-765: The official state silver rush ghost town. Iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the form of magnetite ( Fe 3 O 4 , 72.4% Fe), hematite ( Fe 2 O 3 , 69.9% Fe), goethite ( FeO(OH) , 62.9% Fe), limonite ( FeO(OH)·n(H 2 O) , 55% Fe), or siderite ( FeCO 3 , 48.2% Fe). Ores containing very high quantities of hematite or magnetite, typically greater than about 60% iron, are known as natural ore or direct shipping ore , and can be fed directly into iron-making blast furnaces . Iron ore
8848-621: The original French village at Oradour-sur-Glane which was destroyed on 10 June 1944 when 642 of its 663 inhabitants were killed by a German Waffen-SS company. A new village was built after the war on a nearby site, and the ruins of the original have been maintained as a memorial. Another example is Aghdam , a city in Azerbaijan . Armenian forces occupied Aghdam in July 1993 during the First Nagorno-Karabakh War . The heavy fighting forced
8960-504: The past as high-grade iron ore deposits requiring little beneficiation . There are several granite-associated deposits of this nature in Malaysia and Indonesia . Other sources of magnetite iron ore include metamorphic accumulations of massive magnetite ore such as at Savage River , Tasmania , formed by shearing of ophiolite ultramafics . Another, minor, source of iron ores are magmatic accumulations in layered intrusions which contain
9072-473: The principal Indian producers of iron ore. World consumption of iron ore grows 10% per year on average with the main consumers being China, Japan, Korea, the United States, and the European Union. China is currently the largest consumer of iron ore, which translates to be the world's largest steel producing country. It is also the largest importer, buying 52% of the seaborne trade in iron ore in 2004. China
9184-474: The principal iron mineral. Banded iron formations are known as taconite within North America. The mining involves moving tremendous amounts of ore and waste. The waste comes in two forms: non-ore bedrock in the mine ( overburden or interburden locally known as mullock), and unwanted minerals, which are an intrinsic part of the ore rock itself ( gangue ). The mullock is mined and piled in waste dumps , and
9296-429: The quartz is left behind when the resultant powder is passed under a magnetic separator. Generally, most magnetite banded iron formation deposits must be ground to between 32 and 45 μm (0.0013 and 0.0018 in) in order to produce a low-silica magnetite concentrate. Magnetite concentrate grades are generally in excess of 70% iron by weight and usually are low in phosphorus, aluminium, titanium, and silica and demand
9408-522: The reason for abandonment can arise from a town's intended economic function shifting to another, nearby place. This happened to Collingwood, Queensland , in Outback Australia when nearby Winton outperformed Collingwood as a regional centre for the livestock-raising industry. The railway reached Winton in 1899, linking it with the rest of Queensland , and Collingwood was a ghost town by the following year. More broadly across Australia, there has been
9520-564: The reason for their complete abandonment. Examples are Marinka and Soledar in Donbas in Ukraine . Canada has several ghost towns in parts of British Columbia , Alberta , Ontario , Saskatchewan , Newfoundland and Labrador , and Quebec . Some were logging towns or dual mining and logging sites, often developed at the behest of the company . In Alberta and Saskatchewan, most ghost towns were once farming communities that have since died off due to
9632-552: The rebels, such as Beogombo Deux near Paoua , are ransacked by government soldiers. Those who are not killed have no choice but to escape to refugee camps. The instability in the region also leaves organized and well-equipped bandits free to terrorize the populace, often leaving villages abandoned in their wake. Elsewhere in Africa, the town of Lukangol was burnt to the ground during tribal clashes in South Sudan . Before its destruction,
9744-756: The recovery of the village: in 2011 the proposal of Movimento Libero Perseo "Roveraia eco - lab", based on sustainability, and in 2019 there was a proposal aiming to recover the village with a mix of functions called "Ecomuseum of Pratomagno". In the United Kingdom, thousands of villages were abandoned during the Middle Ages, as a result of Black Death , revolts, and enclosure , the process by which vast amounts of farmland became privately owned. Since there are rarely any visible remains of these settlements, they are not generally considered ghost towns; instead, they are referred to in archaeological circles as deserted medieval villages . Sometimes, wars and genocide end
9856-536: The removal of the railway through the town or the bypass of a highway. The ghost towns in British Columbia were predominantly mining towns and prospecting camps as well as canneries and, in one or two cases, large smelter and pulp mill towns. British Columbia has more ghost towns than any other jurisdiction on the North American continent, with more than 1,500 abandoned or semi-abandoned towns and localities. Among
9968-502: The resources were depleted and loss of highway traffic as US 66 was diverted from places like Oatman, Arizona , onto a more direct path. Mine and pulp mill closures have led to many ghost towns in British Columbia, Canada, including several relatively recent ones: Ocean Falls , which closed in 1973 after the pulp mill was decommissioned; Kitsault , whose molybdenum mine shut down after only 18 months in 1982; and Cassiar , whose asbestos mine operated from 1952 to 1992. In other cases,
10080-458: The resulting possibility of real-estate bubbles (sometimes due to outright overbuilding by land developers) may also trigger the appearance of certain elements of a ghost town, as real-estate prices initially rise (whereupon affordable housing becomes less available) and then later fall for a variety of reasons that are often tied to economic cycles and/or marketing hubris. This has been observed to occur in various countries, including Spain, China,
10192-639: The road to Santiago de Compostela . Some ghost towns (e.g. Riace , Muñotello ) are being repopulated by respectively refugees and homeless people . In Riace, this was accomplished by a scheme funded by the Italian government which offers the housing to refugees and in Muñotello it was accomplished through an NGO ( Madrina Foundation ). In Algeria, many cities became hamlets after the end of Late Antiquity . They were revived with shifts in population during and after French colonization of Algeria . Oran , currently
10304-407: The rock must be comminuted to enable efficient magnetic separation to provide a high-purity magnetite concentrate. This determines the energy inputs required to run a milling operation. Mining of banded iron formations involves coarse crushing and screening, followed by rough crushing and fine grinding to comminute the ore to the point where the crystallized magnetite and quartz are fine enough that
10416-446: The seaborne trade, with 72% of the market. BHP, Rio and Vale control 66% of this market between them. In Australia , iron ore is won from three main sources: pisolite " channel iron deposit " ore derived by mechanical erosion of primary banded-iron formations and accumulated in alluvial channels such as at Pannawonica, Western Australia ; and the dominant metasomatically altered banded iron formation -related ores such as at Newman ,
10528-409: The seventh largest global center of iron ore production, behind Australia, Brazil, China, India, Russia, and South Africa. Producers of iron ore in Ukraine include Ferrexpo , Metinvest , and ArcelorMittal Kryvyi Rih . In 2014, mines in the United States produced 57,500,000 t (56,600,000 long tons; 63,400,000 short tons) of iron ore with an estimated value of $ 5.1 billion. Iron mining in
10640-451: The seventh-largest global center of iron ore production, behind Australia, Brazil, China, Russia, South Africa, and Ukraine. India's iron ore production in 2023 was 285,000,000 metric tonnes and was the fourth largest producer in the world. According to the U.S. Geological Survey's 2021 Report on iron ore, Ukraine is estimated to have produced 62,000,000 t (61,000,000 long tons; 68,000,000 short tons) of iron ore in 2020, placing it as
10752-486: The summer of 1945, the timber frame grain elevators were dismantled. On August 14, as preparations were being made for V-J Day celebrations in other places, the partly dismantled elevators accidentally caught fire. Flying embers carried by the wind, landed on the roofs of the freight sheds, setting off explosives which destroyed whatever remained of the harbour facilities. By late August 1959, all residential buildings had been removed, with only foundations remaining. After
10864-636: The summers. Booth sold his railway to the Grand Trunk Railway in 1904. In 1923, the railway became part of the government-owned Canadian National Railways . The reconstruction of the Welland Canal in 1932, along with 1933 abandonment of a portion of the line in Algonquin Provincial Park (as a consequence of the Cache Lake trestle being damaged by ice), and a drop in grain prices during
10976-401: The table aside. The major constraint to economics for iron ore deposits is not necessarily the grade or size of the deposits, because it is not particularly hard to geologically prove enough tonnage of the rocks exist. The main constraint is the position of the iron ore relative to market, the cost of rail infrastructure to get it to market, and the energy cost required to do so. Mining iron ore
11088-563: The town had a population of 20,000. The Libyan town of Tawergha had a population of around 25,000 before it was abandoned during the 2011 civil war , and it has remained empty since. Many of the ghost towns in mineral-rich Africa are former mining towns. Shortly after the start of the 1908 diamond rush in German South-West Africa , now known as Namibia , the German Imperial government claimed sole mining rights by creating
11200-535: The town practically erased from the map. An example in the UK of a ghost village which was abandoned before it was ever occupied is at Polphail , Argyll and Bute . The planned development of an oil rig construction facility nearby never materialised, and a village built to house the workers and their families became deserted the moment the building contractors finished their work. War activities, displacements and complete destruction of cities as result of intense fighting were
11312-553: The town's buildings to be undertaken and resettlement of the area to take place. Urbanization – the migration of a country's rural population into the cities – has left many European towns and villages deserted. An increasing number of settlements in Bulgaria are becoming ghost towns for this reason; at the time of the 2011 census, the country had 181 uninhabited settlements. In Hungary, dozens of villages are also threatened with abandonment. The first village officially declared as "dead"
11424-406: The town, human intervention, disasters, massacres, wars, the shifting of politics or fall of empires, and volcanic eruptions. A town can also be abandoned when it is part of an exclusion zone due to natural or human-made causes . Ghost towns may result when the single activity or resource that created a boomtown (e.g., nearby mine, mill or resort) is depleted or the resource economy undergoes
11536-589: The two mines shut down. There have also been iron ore mines in Utah and Alabama ; however, the last iron ore mine in Utah shut down in 2014 and the last iron ore mine in Alabama shut down in 1975. Iron ores consist of oxygen and iron atoms bonded together into molecules. To convert it to metallic iron, it must be smelted or sent through a direct reduction process to remove the oxygen. Oxygen-iron bonds are strong, and to remove
11648-455: Was Gyűrűfű [ hu ] in the late 1970s, but later it was repopulated as an eco-village . Some other depopulated villages were successfully saved as small rural resorts, such as Kán , Tornakápolna , Szanticska , Gorica , and Révfalu . In Spain, large zones of the mountainous Iberian System and the Pyrenees have undergone heavy depopulation since the early 20th century, leaving
11760-482: Was abandoned due to an uncontainable mine fire , which began in 1962 and still rages to this day; eventually the fire reached an abandoned mine underneath the nearby town of Byrnesville , which caused that mine to catch on fire too and forced the evacuation of that town as well. Ghost towns may also occasionally come into being due to an anticipated natural disaster – for example, the Canadian town of Lemieux, Ontario ,
11872-582: Was abandoned in 1991 after soil testing revealed that the community was built on an unstable bed of Leda clay . Two years after the last building in Lemieux was demolished, a landslide swept part of the former town-site into the South Nation River . Two decades earlier, the Canadian town of Saint-Jean-Vianney , Québec, also constructed on a Leda clay base, had been abandoned after a landslide on 4 May 1971, which swept away 41 homes, killing 31 people. Following
11984-518: Was abandoned when the mill closed in 1927 and re-opened as a park in 1960. Many ghost towns or abandoned communities exist in the American Great Plains , the rural areas of which have lost a third of their population since 1920. Thousands of communities in the northern plains states of Montana , Nebraska , North Dakota , and South Dakota became railroad ghost towns when a rail line failed to materialize. Hundreds of towns were abandoned as
12096-573: Was built for the workers of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant and had a population of almost 50,000 at the time of the disaster. Significant fatality rates from epidemics have produced ghost towns. Some places in eastern Arkansas were abandoned after more than 7,000 Arkansans died during the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918 and 1919. Several communities in Ireland, particularly in the west of
12208-579: Was founded in 1845, residents of Pattonsburg, Missouri , decided to relocate after two floods in 1993. With government help, the whole town was rebuilt 3 miles or 5 km away. Craco , a medieval village in the Italian region of Basilicata , was evacuated after a landslide in 1963. Nowadays it is a filming location for many movies, including The Passion of The Christ by Mel Gibson , Christ Stopped at Eboli by Francesco Rosi , The Nativity Story by Catherine Hardwicke and Quantum of Solace by Marc Forster . In 1984, Centralia, Pennsylvania ,
12320-413: Was installed along the length of the wharf. Valley Camp and Edmund Fitzgerald were regular visitors to Depot Harbour. When the mine closed in 1979, Depot Harbour was silenced once more. The Anishinaabe reclaimed the expropriated lands in 1987. Little remains of the town except scattered foundations. The bank vault can still be found as well as the loading docks. Only one building remains in use as
12432-617: Was part of one such series of villages along the Atlantic and Pacific Railroad across the Mojave Desert . River re-routing is another factor, one example being the towns along the Aral Sea . Ghost towns may be created when land is expropriated by a government, and residents are required to relocate. One example is the village of Tyneham in Dorset, England, acquired during World War II to build an artillery range. A similar situation occurred in
12544-557: Was shut down in 1966 due to health concerns. Treece and Picher , twin communities straddling the Kansas – Oklahoma border, were once one of the United States' largest sources of zinc and lead , but over a century of unregulated disposal of mine tailings led to groundwater contamination and lead poisoning in the town's children, eventually resulting in a mandatory Environmental Protection Agency buyout and evacuation. Contamination due to ammunition caused by military use may also lead to
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