While you’re visiting northern Ontario, why not explore the area around Thunder Bay, where rolling farmland gives way to forests, lakes and rock. Here, picturesque panoramas will greet you at every turn and the area is home to the most remote section of the U.S./Canada border.
Believe it or not, this area west of Thunder Bay was the destination of one of Ontario’s earliest railway ventures. Then known as Prince Arthur’s Landing, the remote port boomed with life. Silver veins and iron deposits drew investors, miners and prospectors to the area. These people hoped to tap into the rich resources and improve their station in life. A group of them founded a railroad company known as the Port Arthur, Duluth and Western. They planned for the railway to expand through the silver fields and access the iron deposits just across the US border in Minnesota. The western terminal was built deep in the woods of Gunflint, Minnesota.
When the PD&W Railroad opened in 1893, the silver market had fallen into a depression and the small mines had all closed. By the turn of the century, the railroad was no longer being used and was purchased by McKenzie and Mann, who were completing the second transcontinental line in Canada. The reason for the acquisition was to prevent a duplication of eighteen miles of rail line into Thunder Bay that the PD&W had already completed.
From 1904 to 1939, the PD&W was torn up as far as Twin City. Today, it links with the Canadian National Railway line to Sioux Lookout. Locals have dubbed the railroad, “the Poverty, Distress and Welfare,” a moniker that suits it well if its economic performance is taken into consideration.
Today, east of Thunder Bay, the back roads and hills pay testimony to the ghost railway to nowhere. South of the Trans Canada Highway, a solid iron railway bridge that spans the Kiministikwia River is part of a rural dirt road. Back in the days of the PD&W, it was the strongest of the PD&W railway bridges in the area.
The PD&W railway line appears and disappears from view for those traveling on the township roads and through the forest. At Hymers a historic plaque has been erected to pay tribute to the ghost railway of bygone days.