Uranium City is one of Saskatchewan’s most renowned ghost towns, located on the north shore of Lake Athabasca, roughly 400 miles from Prince Albert and nearly equivalent distance from Edmonton.
Uranium City is one of Saskatchewan’s most renowned ghost towns, located on the north shore of Lake Athabasca, roughly 400 miles from Prince Albert and the same distance from Edmonton. It had a population of 5,000 people in the 1960s and 1970s, when the Canadian government was accumulating uranium for the Candu reactor, which was designed and built in Canada.
When the mines were open, the town was a hive of activity. S. Kaiman found the location in 1949 while exploring radioactive elements near Lake Athabasca. The region was used as a uranium mining base until 1983, when the mines were closed, resulting in economic catastrophe. The population has now been reduced to around 50 people.
Large, two-story family residences erected around Uranium City Candu High have been permitted to fall into decay not far from the community’s heart. It was erected just before the famed Eldorado Mine closure and the abandonment of a 5,000-person population. Now, the boreal forest is reclaiming what it once occupied, creating a backdrop reminiscent of Chernobyl, but the nuclear tragedy isn’t radioactive decay, but mine closure and the loss of hundreds of jobs.
