Details: For the past 150 years, mining has been an important industry in British Columbia. During that time, the regulations and practices surrounding this industry have evolved and improved immensely. In May 2000 the Historic Sites Project was initiated by the Reclamation Section of the Mining Division to begin building an inventory of Historic mine sites around the province. The purpose of this program was to identify high priority sites where environmental and health concerns exist. The Historic Mines Atlas is an interactive map that presents this information through a variety of data layers and displays over 1100 past producing mines. The Atlas is based on a 125-page report on a scoping study of the 1887 historic mines in BC (Open File 2003-3). The Historic Mines Atlas is a joint publication of Environment Canada, Pacific and Yukon Region, Environmental Protection Branch and former BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources.
View Historic Mines Atlas on MapPlace
Quick Start-Up to the BC Historic Mines Atlas:
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To view the Historic Mines Atlas, you must download the Autodesk MapGuide Viewer (Version 6.5). Access the Autodesk MapGuide web site to download the viewer through http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=9454886&linkID=9242099.
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Click the image above. The map is also Map No. 66 in Complete Table of Maps.
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The screen, ’Welcome to the British Columbia Historic Mines Atlas’ has two buttons. The Atlas Description button provides a link to the mines atlas 37-page manual, in .PDF form. The Launch Atlas button is to enter the atlas.
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Enter the atlas. Any user may do so by entering VIEW as a UserName, and VIEW as the Password. Only Environment Canada and BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources staff are able to post data onto the atlas (or edit or delete data) in the ‘environmental data’ layer, denoted by the green flags.
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If you have successfully downloaded the software, you will see the atlas home page with ‘layers’ on the left, and a small-scale map of BC on the right. The map has small green flags. The large brown buttons on the toolbar on the upper right include ‘Options’ which opens another toolbar. One of these will expand all map layer group, which is necessary to see contours, roads and other features. Note that some features will not appear until the scale is very large, e.g. larger than 1:100,000, or as large as 1:20,000.
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For a quick view of the atlas’s potential, find the ‘zoom go to’ button (upper left, a magnifying glass with an arrow). Under Category, 1. Mine -> Mine Name, enter Hidden Creek (aka Anyox) and for map width, enter 10 (10 km), which will show the mine site at a scale of between 1:50,000 and 1:75,000. The features imbedded in the map of this site include water quality and shellfish tissue sampling results, photographs and written reports. Here, as for anywhere within BC, map layers for contours, roads, towns, streams and other geographic and cultural features can be turned on or off using the menu on the left. See the Users Manual Section 2.11, page 29 on Viewing Reports. Printing the maps in colour is possible at any scale. |
Downloadable Datasets:
References:
Barazzuol, Lisa N. and Stewart, Gregg G. (2003): Historic Mines of British Columbia, Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, Open File 2003-03, 142 pp.
British Columbia Historic and Operating Mines (Version 2.01) Virtual Atlas, March 2004, revised May 2007; prepared for: Environment Canada Pacific and Yukon Region Environmental Protection Branch and former BC Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources; prepared by Suzanne Richer, Community Mapping Network. |
Contacts and Notes:
For further information contact: |
Gregg Stewart Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations
Crown Contaminated Sites Branch 250.387.9659 Gregg.Stewart@gov.bc.ca | |