Kitsault is a historic mining community near the mouth of the Kitsault River, at the head of Alice Arm—a fjord and eastern extension of Observatory Inlet—about 86 miles (138 km) north-northeast of Prince Rupert and 38 miles (61 km) southeast of Stewart, British Columbia. The name ‘Kitsault’ is derived from the Nisga’a village name ‘Gits’oohl’, meaning ‘a way in behind,’ which referred to a settlement that occupied the site before the 20th century. The Kitsault area lies in the rugged Coast Mountains and is rich in mineral deposits. These mountains form part of the North American Cordillera, which consists of a series of accretionary terranes that, from east to west, include the Foreland Belt, Omineca Belt, Intermontane Belt, Coast Belt, and Insular Belt. Kitsault is located at the western edge of the Intermontane Belt, about 1.2 miles (2 km) east of the Coast Belt. Rocks within the Intermontane Belt range in age from the Devonian to the early Cenozoic and typically include sedimentary, granitic, and volcanic island arc and continental arc formations. Marine and non-marine sediments such as those in the Bowser Lake Group, which were eroded largely from uplift in the Omineca Belt, are also common. The Bowser Lake Group is composed primarily of graywacke that was metamorphosed to greenschist during intense igneous intrusion associated with the Coast Belt, also known as the Coast Plutonic Complex. Between 64 and 54 million years ago, during the Paleogene period, magma intruded the Bowser Lake Group. As it cooled, it formed massive cores of crystalline igneous rock—now exposed by erosion—that make up the present-day Coast Mountains. In the Kitsault area, this predominantly felsic magma cooled into coarse crystalline granitic rocks ranging from quartz diorite to quartz monzonite. These hard rocks erode much more slowly than the surrounding Bowser Lake sedimentary deposits. In the outer zone of one such granitic intrusion—on the south side of Mount Widdzech, in the Lime Creek watershed above Kitsault—the mineral molybdenite was deposited along the contact layer between igneous and sedimentary rock.

Human settlement of the coastal fringe began shortly after the massive ice sheets of the Last Glacial Maximum retreated, about 10,000 years ago. The Haisla, Tsimshian, and Nisga’a First Nations established thriving communities along the deep fjords that cut into the Coast Mountains. Villages and fishing sites were historically located throughout Observatory Inlet. Kitsault lies within the traditional territory of the Nisga’a Nation. In the 1700s, contact with Europeans increased as explorers and fur traders discovered the region’s abundant natural resources. A brisk maritime fur trade developed in the Queen Charlotte Islands (now Haida Gwaii) and along the adjacent mainland, though few traders ventured inland. In the 1790s, the British Navy launched a systematic effort to map the coastline between the mouth of the Columbia River and Russian America, north of Dixon Entrance. Observatory Inlet was named in 1793 by Captain George Vancouver, who established an astronomical observatory on its shore to calibrate his chronometers. By 1834, the Hudson’s Bay Company had established Fort Simpson at Lax-Kw’alaams, a traditional Tsimshian camping site. Smallpox epidemics in the late 1700s and 1860s devastated many Indigenous communities on the north coast. By the early 1900s, the village at Gits’oohl was unoccupied. In 1868, Alice Arm was named by Captain Daniel Pender on the Hudson’s Bay Company ship Beaver after Alice Mary Tomlinson, wife of Reverend Robert Tomlinson, the Anglican minister in charge of the mission at Gingolx, a Nisga’a village at the mouth of the Nass River. Captain Pender, a Royal Navy officer, conducted detailed coastal surveys of the British colonies of Vancouver Island and British Columbia from 1857 to 1870. The two colonies were amalgamated in 1866, and British Columbia joined Canada in 1871.

In 1929, land on the west side of the Kitsault River was sold as building lots in the mining town of Alice Arm. On the east side, at Lime Creek above the small settlement of Silver City, silver claims were staked in 1911 and worked into the 1930s. A minor amount of molybdenite was extracted during World War II, but the ore was not considered significant. Interest revived in 1956 when Kennco Explorations Ltd., a subsidiary of the American firm Kennecott Copper Corporation, examined the Lime Creek claims and optioned the properties the following year. Extensive diamond drilling began in 1957. Alongside lead (galena) and silver, the company discovered a large deposit of porphyry molybdenum—a metal vital to high-strength steel used in Cold War armaments, aircraft nose-cones, and space technology. In 1964, British Columbia Molybdenum Ltd., another Kennecott subsidiary, began building a mine at 2,296 feet (700 m) on Patsy Creek, the east fork of Lime Creek. From 1968 to 1972, the open-pit mine produced 22.9 million pounds (10 million kg) of molybdenum from 9.3 million tonnes of ore. The mine closed in 1972 due to falling prices. In 1973, the property was acquired by Climax Molybdenum Corporation of British Columbia, a subsidiary of AMAX Inc., which resumed exploration until 1978. Transferred to Amax of Canada Ltd. in 1979, the site was re-opened, and construction of the company town of Kitsault began to house workers and their families. Between 1981 and 1982, 4.1 million tonnes of ore were milled, producing 8 million pounds (3 million kg) of molybdenum. Mining halted in 1982 following another price collapse. Kitsault was evacuated but maintained until 2005, when it was sold to Kitsault Resort Ltd. for proposed development as a world-class eco-resort. Read more here and here. Explore more of Kitsault and Alice Arm here: