About this location
Burgess was the smaller sister town of Craigmont. In 1902 the Ontario Corundum Company found corundum here as well- on the side of a mountain. More miners came by 1913 after a major fire destroyed the mine at Craigmont. Burgess Mine, located in Carlow Township was a similar operation that blasted rock from the side of the mountain, which was loaded with corundum crystals.
Supposedly the population grew to be 300 at its height of production. There was a church, a post office (opened 1905), boarding houses, a hotel, cottages and a telegraph office. Things lasted here until 1917 when a substitute for corundum was found.
When I was here in the autumn of 2009 I found one building, some strange hole shoots behind it on the mountain and one of the mine shafts (there were a few). It is now plugged up, very decoratively, with well-placed granite rocks inside the forest.
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