Wheeling Mine, Chapman Township, Parry Sound District, Ontario, Canadai

Regional Level Types
Wheeling Mine	Mine
Chapman Township	Township
Parry Sound District	District
Ontario	Province
Canada	Country

A large body of coarse, pink pegmatitic granite, carrying considerable black mica, occurs on this lot and was worked between 1920 and 1923 by the Wheeling Feldspar Company, of Wheeling, West Virginia. There is very little clean spar present in the dyke and the entire output is reported to have been used for stucco purposes. A small quarry opening was made in the side of a low knoll, the worked face being 60 feet long and 15 feet high. The pit lies 500 feet from the shore of Cecebe lake, where a wharf was built and a crushing plant erected, the crushed s.par being shipped by scow to rail at Burk's Falls, on the Canadian National railway, a distance of 12 miles. The property has been idle since 1923 and the crushing plant has been dismantled. About 1,000 tons of material is stated to have been shipped. (Spence 1932)


The biotite pegmatite dike has occasional coarse-grained areas containing feldspar crystals up to 1 foot in diameter, and quartz masses with a maximum diameter of 2 feet. Some of the feldspar has graphic intergrowths of quartz. The entire output of the pit was reportedly used for stucco purposes.

06/09/2014 (Lloyd Van Duzen)
I wish to thank Mr. Bev King and Mr. Michael Chen for permission to visit and document the workings of the mine site. Bev King offered information about the mine being worked. Bev told me that the original date the site was worked was shortly after world war 1. He said his father and two other men extracted the feldspar and loaded cars that moved along a small scale railway track down hill to the water's edge at Michael Chen's cottage. Then the material was was loaded on barge's and shipped east through Lake Cecebe and up the Magnetawan River to the wharf at burk's falls where it was loaded onto train cars and shipped to Virginia USA.
According to both Bev King and the property owner Michael Chen, within the foundation of Michael Chen's cottage was a large, heavy pulley like system and cable designed to moved loaded cars downhill from, and empty cars up hill to the mine. While visiting the site with the property owner I seen no trace of the track or cars. Micheal did show me what looked to be a faint outline of a trail leading in a straight path downhill to his cottage, which Bev and Michael think was the track bed. A small rusted steel frame with hinges on it was the only thing we observed that may have been part of the cars or the tracks. No other traces of the tracks or cars were seen.

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References