In the town I grew up in, there is a house that is perfectly preserved as it would have been in 1955. When I say totally frozen in time, I mean totally frozen in time.
All of the appliances are still 1950s-era appliances. All of the furniture is still from the era and in almost perfect condition.
As the story goes, the person who owned the house bought the house and assumed that design and fashion always change. Their thought was that if someone in 1995 wanted to do a movie set in 1955; they’d have to film in their house for it to be accurate.
The guy who owned it was kind of strange, but you have to love the fact that there are some places in the world that are absolutely frozen in time. One of these places, and one of my great fascinations in life is the Canadian town of Kitsault.
Kitsauld is a planned community that was built from the ground up by a company called Amax.
It was intended to be a long-term community for the employees and families of the mining company who were going to be tasked upon arrival with extracting molybdenum.
The problem was that the mine was so remote that it would make traveling daily to and from work impossible. Like going from Chicago to Detroit every day level impossible.
So the company built a town. They built single-family homes, they built apartment buildings. They began hiring people and brought them out in the middle of nowhere.
Now, there’s not a lot to do in the middle of nowhere right? Well, in this town that would be a bit of a misnomer. They built a grocery store, movie theater, schools, gyms, bars, bowling alleys, and a shopping mall.
At one time, what might have been one of the five northernmost Sears locations was in this mall in the middle of the woods. Sure, it was a Sears where you mostly picked your stuff up that you ordered from a catalog but they had a mall with a Sears.
The town opened up, and the company expected to have about 25 to 30 years where the mine and the town as a consequence would be in operation.
Then after about a little over a year, the price of molybdenum sunk to record lows. It was going to cost the money a fortune to keep the mine open so they did what they had to do. They closed down the mine and had to move every last person out of town.
They had to move so quickly that they pretty much had to leave everything that wasn’t perishable. In recent years a businessman has been trying to renovate the town and get it back into operation, hopefully returning this ghost town back to life.