Copperfield's Mine

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Copperfields Mine (originally known as Temagami Mine) was a copper mine in a sulfide ore body on Temagami Island, Lake Temagami that opened in 1954. The mine produced 34,000,000 dollars Canadian^[1] and was considered to mine the purest copper ore in Canada. The mine closed in 1972 and is now flooded by water. At the site of the mine there are remnants of buildings, railroad tracks, tunnels, and some roads and telephone poles still exist. It is possible to find ores and minerals in the scrap heaps of the old mine such as chalcopyrite, pyrite, bornite, malachite, dolomite, hessite, merenskyite, millerite, palladium, quartz and other minerals. The easiest way to get to the old mine is by boating up Lake Temagami, driving down the Lake Temagami Access Road or by hiking on some trails on Temagami Island that lead to the old mine.

Copper-nickel mineralization at the mine is associated with semi-massive to disseminated pyrite at the lower tontact between an altered felsic gabbro and rhyolite volcanic rocks. The gabbro is steeply dipping, approximately 250 m thick and has a strike extent of at least 5 km. The intensity of mineralization varies greatly but is present over most of the defined strike length of the gabbro. Copper is associated with chalcopyrite. Nickel is associated with millerite, gersdorffite, linnaeite and cobalt-nickel sulpharsenides.

Copperfields Mine is the site of a bright white mineral called temagamite.^[2] It was discovered in 1973.