Ontario has more ghost towns than most people realize. Scattered across the province, from the rocky shores of Lake Superior to the farmlands south of Ottawa, are the remains of communities that once had post offices, general stores, schools, and churches. Some were abandoned gradually as economic conditions changed. Others were emptied almost overnight when a mine closed or a mill burned down.
The term ghost town is used loosely here. Some of these places still have a handful of residents, a seasonal cottage, or a maintained cemetery. Others have been completely erased, visible only as clearings in the forest or as place names on old maps. What they share is a story of decline, a community that once existed and now, for all practical purposes, does not.
Mining Ghost Towns
Northern Ontario's mining ghost towns are perhaps the most dramatic. The province's mineral wealth drew waves of prospectors and settlers from the 1880s onwards, and wherever significant deposits were found, towns appeared almost overnight. When the ore ran out or commodity prices collapsed, these towns died just as quickly.
Burchell Lake, in northwestern Ontario, is a classic example. Built in the 1960s to serve an iron mine, the town once had over 300 residents, a school, a recreation centre, and rows of company houses. The mine closed in 1970 after less than a decade of operation. Today the buildings are collapsing into the bush, and the road in is barely passable.
Near Cobalt, in the northeast, the silver rush of 1903 created dozens of small settlements in the surrounding bush. Names like Silver Centre, Kerr Lake, and Giroux Lake appear on maps from the period. Most were gone within twenty years. The area around Cobalt is still dotted with industrial remnants, headframes, and mine shafts from this era, though Cobalt itself has survived as a small community.
The remains of a former settlement, now slowly being reclaimed by the surrounding forest.
Lumber Towns
The Ottawa Valley's lumber industry created a different kind of ghost town. Unlike mining settlements, which were often built by a single company, lumber towns grew up organically around sawmills and river drives. When the timber was exhausted, the mills closed and the towns shrank. Some survived by transitioning to farming or tourism. Many did not.
The Ottawa Valley is full of these former lumber communities. Places like Clontarf, Brudenell, and Foymount were once busy villages with hotels, blacksmiths, and thriving main streets. Today they are quiet crossroads, their former importance visible only in the size of their cemeteries and the scale of their abandoned mill foundations.
Foymount deserves special mention. Built during the Cold War as a radar station for the RCAF, the village was one of the highest populated points in Ontario. When the military left in 1974, the town was largely abandoned. The radar domes and military buildings stood empty for decades, slowly deteriorating. It remains one of the most atmospheric ghost town sites in the province.
Agricultural Ghost Towns
Less dramatic but far more numerous are Ontario's agricultural ghost towns. Throughout the nineteenth century, settlers pushed into marginal land across the province, establishing communities that were never quite viable. The thin soil of the Canadian Shield, the short growing season of the north, and the isolation of the interior all took their toll.
Many of these communities disappeared so completely that only old maps and census records prove they existed. In Eastern Ontario, the colonization roads built in the 1850s and 1860s were supposed to open up the interior for settlement. The land grants along these roads attracted families who quickly discovered that the rocky terrain could not support commercial farming. Within a generation, most had left.
The Addington Road, the Hastings Road, and the Opeongo Road all have ghost towns along their routes. Some, like Boulter and Umfraville, still appear on modern maps as named locations even though there is nothing there but forest.
Finding Ghost Towns
Historical county atlases, available at many Ontario libraries and online through university archives, are the best starting point for finding ghost towns. These atlases, published in the 1870s and 1880s, show every settlement, school, church, and mill in the county at that time. Comparing them with modern maps reveals dozens of places that no longer exist.
On the ground, ghost towns often reveal themselves through subtle signs: an old cemetery in the middle of nowhere, a line of mature maple trees that once shaded a main street, a concrete foundation too large to be a farmhouse. In the north, where the forest grows quickly, ghost towns can be almost invisible unless you know exactly where to look.
We maintain a policy of not publishing exact locations for sensitive sites, particularly those on private land. If you are interested in visiting ghost towns, we recommend starting with well-documented sites that are on public land or have established access. Our ethics guide covers the principles we follow when visiting these places.