Bathurst Mining Camp

The Bathurst Mining Camp is a mining district in northeast New Brunswick, Canada, centred in the Nepisiguit River valley, and near to Bathurst. The camp hosts 45 known volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) deposits typical of the Appalachian Mountains. Some of the ore is smelted at the Belledune facility of Xstrata. Although the primary commodity is zinc, the massive-sulphide ore body produces lead, zinc, copper, silver, gold, bismuth, antimony and cadmium.

Loring Bailey, the professor of geology at UNB in 1864, wrote that:

The Bathurst Mining Camp was the location of an iron mine, for a time ending early in the 20th century. The Northern New Brunswick and Seaboard (NNB&S) railroad was built from the Intercolonial Railway line near Bathurst approximately 17 miles up the Nepisiguit River to service the mines, but had a short history, terminating in 1918 when it officially ceased operation due to the closure of the iron mine in 1913. The railroad passed into the hands of the provincial government, who were the guarantors of the bonds financing the NNB&S. By 1959 the provincial government had all of the remaining rails lifted.

A massive sulphide orebody was discovered in 1953.

In 1963 the 14 mile line to Brunswick Mines from Nepisiguit Junction was rebuilt by Canadian National Railways to serve the then-projected zinc mine resulting from the 1953 discovery.

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