Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

https://justinmcelroy.com/2022/07/26/visiting-canadas-50-million-1980s-ghost-town/

540 186 4 years ago

treespace8• 4 years ago

I can see why it's being taken care of. A town with Tide Water access on Canada's west coast could be very very valuable.

cj• 4 years ago

(At the risk of sounding uninformed) - why?

pj_mukh2• 4 years ago

Canada likes to ship its oil out that way, esp to Asia.

Pipelines from Alberta to BC are a political minefield but buying real-estate and then waiting for the politics to “blow-over” is apparently a thing that happens a lot.

Landsubsidence• 4 years ago

In the next 100 years the tide water will gain several fee in depth. Shipping ports are the most valued geographical asset there is.

Even a minor change in water depth would dramatically increase waterfront realestate area.

The key here is the abandoned infrastructure origionaly left for the school an shoping mall.

People will flee further north with time as our lives become more decentralized and the climate become more temperate.

scythe3• 4 years ago

Due to spherical geometry, Prince Rupert is closer to Asia than any other reasonable North American port (sorry, Skagway) south of Anchorage. Kitsault is just up the inlet, and much easier to reach (crossing the Coast Mountains sunk Prince Rupert). It also happens to be easier (lower) to cross the Rockies (CA-16) when you're north of Prince George, so Kitsault could possibly have better access to Chicago than does, say, Seattle (I'm not certain here).

However, the col to access Kitsault from the BC central valley is still about half a mile high, so you would need to build a tunnel to get decent rail freight capacity. It would be a short one, easier than tunneling to Stewart/Hyder. Also, the inlet is only about 1800 feet wide, which could be difficult to navigate considering the high frequency of inclement weather in the area.

jabbany5• 4 years ago

Also given the state of global warming... Something still coastal but further up north could prove to be quite desirable in the future climate-wise...

_jal• 4 years ago

I missed the "1980s" part at first and expected an article about Google's panopticon-town. What ever happened to that?

frenchy• 4 years ago

I belive it got cancelled (https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/sidewalk-labs-cancels...).

OrangeMonkey• 4 years ago

Google, canceling a project? Surely you jest.

fullshark• 4 years ago

Project was abandoned supposedly due to COVID but possibly that was just a convenient excuse.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/7/21250594/alphabet-sidewalk...

jeromegv• 4 years ago

It's mostly local opposition, it wasn't really popular within the city and Google was horrible at trying to communicate what they really wanted to do with that place. At the end of the day, giving so much power to develop a part of the city to a private entity was weird.

StrictDabbler3• 4 years ago

FYI: This Justin McElroy is a respected Canadian journalist.

He is not closely related to the Justin McElroy of MBMBAM though they do look very similar.

Waterluvian• 4 years ago

Thank you. I was wondering this!!

InCityDreams• 4 years ago

Why the italics on 'closely'?

scythe3• 4 years ago

Everyone's related to everyone else if you go back far enough. Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt turned out to be sixth (-ish?) cousins.

StrictDabbler3• 4 years ago

McElroy is a specific name that originated in two small geographical regions with tightly tied genetics and the two Justins bear a strong resemblance.

Most Scotch-Irish people in Canada are related in some way because the initial colonizing wave was quite small. The podcasters are from Milwaukee which shares a border with Canada, is near Canada's most populous city, and was largely settled in that same small wave.

Asserting that they're "no relation" would be quite a stretch.

djmips4• 4 years ago

Getting out front of the pedants.

upupandup2• 4 years ago

BC in the 80s, 90s seemed like completely different worlds compared to today. Vancouver especially seemed to have peaked early 2000s before the housing bubble took off. Rainforest Cafe, Playdium, Indy 500, Vancouver Grizzlies, Canucks.

It had so much going for it. What was once a fun, soulful city is now something completely different.

RC_ITR• 4 years ago

Excuse my ignorance, but do you mean something more than there being a rainforest cafe there?

Semi-tangential: you’ll probably enjoy this video: https://youtu.be/vA-bjpKvIw8

His mate made a similar video with a more positive tone, but this one struck me as funnier.

ilrwbwrkhv• 4 years ago

I think Canada as a whole peaked in the early 2000s.

cgh4• 4 years ago

The Achilles heel of Vancouver was the insane liquor licensing, which lead to the moniker of "No Fun City". That's what you get when your city is founded by a bunch of Scottish Calvinists.

But otherwise, I have great memories of my early 20s seeing bands at the Niagara Hotel and hanging out three nights a week at the Ivanhoe while paying $500 a month for a decent studio in the West End. Commercial Drive was in full swing as a sort of '90s Haight-Ashbury. Now all those places are gone and the city feels sleek and generic, like a cut-rate Hong Kong.

jabbany5• 4 years ago

sleek and generic
Hong Kong

Idk, but I would not call Hong Kong sleek and generic... If anything it's kind of the opposite.

dleslie3• 4 years ago

BC was altered considerably by a series of economic crisis in the 90s; notably the softwood lumber dispute, the opening of raw log exports, the salmon fishery dispute, and the asian economic crisis. All told, they had the cumulative effect of shifting BC's economy away from lumber and fisheries and toward tourism and real estate.

moistly3• 4 years ago

The criminal government from 2001- 2017 did not help matters. Money laundering so extensive that it begot its own name (the “Vancouver Model”). It completely fucked the housing market.

marcodiego3• 4 years ago

Rant: Please give-me real links to images. I love ctrl-clicking them and then later looking at them on the open tabs. This clicking an image and having a modal overlay prevents me from reading the text.

gwbas1c• 4 years ago

Right-click to open in a new tab works.

marcodiego3• 4 years ago

Not as simple as ctrl-click.

dang• 4 years ago

"Please don't complain about tangential annoyances—things like article or website formats, name collisions, or back-button breakage. They're too common to be interesting."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

themodelplumber• 4 years ago

This reminds me of NFB's _Welcome to Pine Point_, a web documentary about a vanished community:

https://pinepoint.nfb.ca/

designium• 4 years ago

At least if there's a zombie outbreak, I'd go to Kitsault for refuge.

jonny_eh2• 4 years ago

Because there's a pub?

RajT88• 4 years ago

And crucially, no humans which would turn into zombies.

More crucially, no competition for beer refills.

HeckFeck2• 4 years ago

Have a pint at the Winchester and wait for all this to blow over.

mkl95• 4 years ago

I'm no real estate developer, but isn't $50M very cheap?

jonny_eh2• 4 years ago

In 1980's dollars?

jjulius3• 4 years ago

From the article:

Not only a ghost town, but a ghost town that was built for $50 million in 1981...
It is a long way from any major city, and not accessible by road...

Edit: From Wikipedia...

In 2004, the ghost town was bought by Indian-Canadian businessman Krishnan Suthanthiran for $5.7 million; he has spent $2 million maintaining the town.[2] In the end, he would have spent over $20 million more to fully update the town. He has also since closed the town to the public.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitsault

danans3• 4 years ago

and not accessible by road...

That doesn't seem to be true:

https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Port+Edward,+BC,+Canada/Kits...

Alupis• 4 years ago

Assuming CAD and using the Bank Of Canada's inflation calculator[1], $50M in 1981 equates to about $154M today.

[1] https://www.bankofcanada.ca/rates/related/inflation-calculat...

woobar• 4 years ago

For comparison: one house in Bel Air at $150M

https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/10721-Stradella-Ct-Los-An...

stjohnswarts2• 4 years ago

They bought it in like the early 80s to that would be more like 150-200 million in today's dollars.

mortenjorck• 4 years ago

Among the commercial spaces, one of them is about as close as they come to the popular, liminal-space conception of The Backrooms: https://justinmcelroy.com/2022/07/26/visiting-canadas-50-mil...

julianlam• 4 years ago

When we visited NY a month ago, we—on a whim—stopped by the deserted village at Watchung, same deal, although the buildings are mostly all condemned.

To have essentially a town frozen in time, maintained as such, is such a treasure.

patentatt• 4 years ago

Out of curiosity I looked it up on a map [1]. It appears two of the closest settlements [2],[3] are also ghost towns or otherwise pretty much abandoned. Kind of nice to know there are habitable but uninhabited places left in the world.

[1] https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=Kitsault+%2C+BC&ia=web&iaxm...

[2] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Arm,_British_Columbia

[3] https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Anyox

walrus01• 4 years ago

If one looks at the area of the Discovery Islands and other places in BC there is a lot of uninhabited area. If you go north on the island highway from Nanaimo BC on Vancouver Island the population density and town size starts getting small pretty quick. BC is huge.

jjulius3• 4 years ago

Hell, go take a look at the Northern Territories and almost all of Northern Canada. You can even Street View the entire drive from Dawson City in the Yukon to Tukoyatuk, basically as far north as you can go. It's beautiful and eeeeeeempty.

Edit: I suppose I missed the part about a locale being "habitable but uninhabited". The Northern Territories aren't very inhabitable, but I still find the vastness absolutely fascinating at any rate.

ggcdn• 4 years ago

If you follow the inlet back to the ocean a short ways, you reach Gingolx (Kincolith) [1] which has < 400 people. It would be a fairly unremarkable place except they randomly started having a big festival called crabfest, which has brought bands such as Trooper, Tom Cochrane, and Nazareth to this tiny village.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ging%CC%B1olx

tomcam• 4 years ago

To be fair at this point Nazareth would be willing to perform in exchange for dinner at the Old Country Buffet

thrdbndndn• 4 years ago

The DDG map link for Kitsault seems pretty off. It shows me a nearby location called "Alice Arm", instead of actual Kitsault.

Tiktaalik3• 4 years ago

There were plenty of towns set up purely for ruthlessly exploiting resources and then when the resources were gone the town closed up. On the coast these were often whaling towns or salmon fishing canning towns. In the interior it was mining.

Barkerville is an extremely well preserved olde gold rush mining town and well worth a visit if one visits the interior of BC. https://www.barkerville.ca/

Phileosopher• 4 years ago

I live in Iowa. Moved out here because I wanted to see what sorts of uninhabited-but-habitable places I could move to. The US Midwest has a lot of them if you're willing to poke around LandWatch.

rr8883• 4 years ago

Looking at the map I only just noticed how small the BC coastline is and how Alaska takes most of it. Looks like it goes back to agreement between England and Russia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Saint_Petersburg_(18...

And there were never more than 700 Russians in Alaska. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_America#Sale_of_Alaska...

pcthrowaway2• 4 years ago

I believe BC has more coastline than every U.S. state other than Alaska, so don't feel too bad about it.

ZanyProgrammer• 4 years ago

Yes, since US states are much, much smaller than BC, that's not surprising.

bilsbie2• 4 years ago

Even Florida?

cgh4• 4 years ago

The Alaska Panhandle (the part of Alaska that extends down the west coast of BC) and the coast of BC are actually roughly equal length (BC's coast is slightly longer, I believe). You are probably looking at a Mercator projection which distorts sizes. Try looking at a more accurate map projection.

rr8883• 4 years ago

Its more that why does the panhandle exist at all, it should all be BC.

slavik81• 4 years ago

The Alaskan panhandle was the subject of a border dispute between Canada and the United States. The UK adjudicated and it was decided in favour of the US. It was a very unpopular decision in Canada. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_boundary_dispute

rr8883• 4 years ago

Even the Canadian claim left the coast to being part of Alaska, which is why I was surprised at.

avidphantasm• 4 years ago

New Hampshire and Maine had a border dispute over Seavey’s Island, which was only settled in 2002: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piscataqua_River_border_disp...

TMWNN2• 4 years ago

Looking at the map I only just noticed how small the BC coastline is and how Alaska takes most of it.

Canada and the UK worried in the late 1940s that Newfoundland—at the time, planning to regain self-government after 15 years under British stewardship—would want to join the US, which the island historically has had the most commercial links with. Canada didn't have much trade with Newfoundland, but didn't want the US to essentially blockade its east the way Alaska already blockaded its west. Thus, when referendums were set up to give residents a choice of what to do, only the options of self-government, continued British rule, or joining Canada were listed.

calvinmorrison2• 4 years ago

The Orthodox church in Sitka is worth visiting

bitwize• 4 years ago

Oh, man, the liminal-spaces YouTube videos this will generate...

Jonovono• 4 years ago

I just emailed them asking if they are doing anything with it. They responded and sent me here: http://www.kitsaultenergy.com/index.html

FirstLvR• 4 years ago

This is so weird and creepy, I just applied!

bilsbie2• 4 years ago

Let’s start a hacker news town!

dbcurtis• 4 years ago

Applied for what? The web site looks mostly like "Yo, politicians, you really should build a pipeline here to my empty town." What is there to actually apply for?

jmspring• 4 years ago

I’ll check the site out when on non-mobile. But what sort of internet connectivity?

shakna• 4 years ago

There are four occupant ready apartment buildings complete with 96 furnished two and three bedroom units. An additional 60 apartment units will be available for occupancy. All apartments are serviced by the town's water, electric and sewage systems.
There is an office with phone, fax, internet, and photocopier facilities. We have an industrial kitchen with all appliances and a dining room that can seat 60 people. [0]

The answer to internet facilities seems to be "exists", but no more detail than that.

The last time I lived in similar level of remoteness, we had access to a single 15/5 satellite connection that was then split between all residences. It wouldn't surprise me if that was also the case, here. Starlink may also be available, and it's pretty much guaranteed to be faster than anyone else.

[0] http://www.kitsaultenergy.com/housing.html

bookofjoe• 4 years ago

Starlink

jacquesm2• 4 years ago

North of Jasper but closer to the sea, and right next door to Alaska. Interesting spot but be prepared to add substantial cost of transportation to every molecule you may require.

calvinmorrison2• 4 years ago

South of Sitka, the weathers gotta be great

HeckFeck2• 4 years ago

Imagine if it was preserved as a historic model town, much like the Cultra Folk Museum, but for the 1980s instead of the 1940s. Some photos of that museum here:

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=cultra+folk+museum+geograph&t=fpas...

It won't be long before the 1980s are as remote as the 40s were, and we wonder what life was like in a slightly more innocent time before the web and 9/11.

Also I am surprised that it hasn't featured in any 1980s films or series.

jabbany5• 4 years ago

Interesting. Would love to visit some day, possibly during a trip to northern BC.

One thought I had after looking at the pictures is that... it really doesn't look that old/historic. I live in the PNW right now and a lot of the houses and public infrastructure still look just like this! Heck, I live in a '80s house that's still in original condition just like in the pictures...

stjohnswarts2• 4 years ago

I doubt you can visit unless you're a blogger/journalist/business guest.

taken_username• 4 years ago

There is also an official website: http://www.kitsault.com/index.html

nsxwolf• 4 years ago

The house has so many design and decor cues from the house/neighborhood I grew up in in Redmond, WA. I wonder if there's a name for that design movement of orange carpet, wood panelling, wallpaper, linoleum, popcorn ceilings...

jabbany5• 4 years ago

Yeah, this kind of split-level design was super common in the PNW and 1980s isn't even particularly old when it comes to housing (plenty of houses in the Seattle metro area that are from the '20s...).

Like here's a random listing from 30 seconds of searching that has light renovations: https://www.redfin.com/WA/Seattle/10201-23rd-Ct-SW-98146/hom... and if you spend enough time looking for "affordable" options in suburbs, it's not hard to find ones that have not been renovated since they were built in the '70s and '80s.

olyjohn• 4 years ago

There's a common thing that I've noticed when going to Canada. As soon as you cross the border, you see tons of houses built in the 70s and 80s that are sided with stucco. They look so out of place in BC. In Washington, our climate is pretty much the same, but nobody here has stucco houses. I'm curious why so many up in Canada, but not here. They look like they would fit in nicely in Southern California.

duxup• 4 years ago

Upper Midwest had those split levels too!

__turbobrew__• 4 years ago

My realtor says that split level design is known locally as the "BC Box"

bonestamp22• 4 years ago

That was the late 70s/early 80s in North America, no?

qbasic_forever2• 4 years ago

Not just PNW, in the midwest where I grew up it was full of split level homes like that too. A bit more brick exterior but otherwise the exact same formula.

mind_heist• 4 years ago

I think "mid-century modern" captures the design aesthetics.

guerrilla2• 4 years ago

What a beautiful place...

everyone was ordered to leave town.

Hmm well that seems to be the problem. A shame it wasn't allowed to grown on it's own and then maybe something would have come of it... Weird that it's private property, that is a bit creepy.

jabbany5• 4 years ago

Ahh yes the rich history of exploitative company towns :)

adolph• 4 years ago

Needs to be a Lost se/prequel filmed there

dredmorbius2• 4 years ago

Shoot the finale first this time.

quietthrow• 4 years ago

More info and history etc here : [PDF] http://www.kitsault.com/flip_book/kitsault_book.pdf

djmips4• 4 years ago

Nearby (13 miles), is another ghost town but much older and destroyed. It's called Anyox and has a beautiful Eastwood buttress arch dam. I toured the area 15 years ago or so and it was fascinating. Beautiful scenery as well.

JSoet• 4 years ago

yeah, I recently watched a youtube video about that town, looks pretty interesting. And the guy seems to have a few more videos from other abandoned towns in BC too... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7PVZq-lqCs

Melatonic• 4 years ago

So......can I buy real estate here for my future relatives in about 150 years once it is nice and toasty?

lostlogin3• 4 years ago

These is something perversely funny about setting up for a future that’s worse, rather than trying to fix the situation. Obviously it’s easy to control what a few people do over what a few billion people do.

brent_noorda• 4 years ago

A turnkey Alzheimer’s town. The next Hogeweyk. Sign me up (I’m just about ready).

nyx_land• 4 years ago

It's neat to see one of my personal holy grails of urban exploring being posted here and then see people talking about gentrifying an entire preserved town from the 80s to build some kind of weird techbro commune. Never change HN.

notatoad• 4 years ago

I get the disdain for gentrification when it displaces existing communities.

I have a harder time seeing the harm in finding a productive use for a city that currently doesn’t have a productive use. It’s cool that this place exists, and is a bit of a time capsule. But it’s not that noteworthy or valuable beyond being a mild curiosity, and certainly not worth preserving if it can be used for actual benefit instead.

I always thought part of the appeal of urban exploration and abandoned sites was the knowledge that abandoned places get redeveloped, and the fun is in exploring it before it gets turned into something new and shiny. Artificially preserving a place that could have another use takes it from “urban exploration” to visiting a museum, which is much less cool

prawn• 4 years ago

Also, little surprise that people would outline that tack in a community about finding ideas and solutions.

BogdanPetre• 4 years ago

I wonder if anybody was born there in the 80s…

RichardHeart• 4 years ago

Seems ideal for a cult of some sort.

thematrixturtle2• 4 years ago

If anybody else is wondering how the molybdenum market is doing these days, here's a chart:

https://www.mining.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/molybdenum...

The price halving that killed the mine/town in the mid-1980s is barely visible at the very beginning. There was a massive price spike to above $10/lb around 2005, but it fell back to around $2 and has been pretty flat ever since. Production is reasonably evenly split between China, the US and Chile, so geopolitical risk is not huge.

Vilkku• 4 years ago

Looks like that chart doesn't contain information from the 80's. I found this chart where the 1980 price level and crash seems to be pretty significant: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Historical-rhenium-metal...

thematrixturtle2• 4 years ago

That's rhenium, not molybdenum?

michaelcampbell2• 4 years ago

The price halving that killed the mine/town in the mid-1980s is barely visible at the very beginning

where? It starts at 1996.

nivertech• 4 years ago

This could be the excellent site for a re-education camp for the unvaccinated ;)

mejthemage• 4 years ago

Let's not even joke about that.

kensai• 4 years ago

Has anyone noticed there is a customer waiting to be served at the Royal Bank?! ><

michaelcampbell2• 4 years ago

A totally tangentially interesting thing about that blog is that ... OMG, someone is still using "pingback"s.

Kitsault, Canada’s $50M 1980s ghost town

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