Dryden claims stake in exploration: city lands junior miner to search old gold camp.

• Author: Ross, Ian

The City of Dryden is hopping on the exploration bandwagon in a big way.

After landing a junior miner this past summer to search for gold on an unused piece of municipal property, the city wants to get more companies into an area of northwestern Ontario that's been largely unexplored for generations.

The economic development corporation is working on an online mineral resource guide (www.exploredryden.ca) for prospectors and exploration firms on what labour, products and services are offered in the area. The aim is to make Dryden a mining service hub for the region.

Though the city stands to gain financially from an option agreement they signed in June, along with a bunch of other private landowners, city councillor Mike Wood wants the bigger spinoffs on the mining supply side to help augment the region's struggling forest industry.

"Exploration is a business onto itself. Whether there's a mine is not the issue. The fact that this area is being seriously looked at for the first time in generations can't help but have a positive impact on the economy."

Pulp and paper production has long been an economic staple of the community of 8,200.

"For far too long this town has been single industry and anything we can do to diversify the economy is exactly what we need to do," says Wood.

The Ontario Geological Survey lists 55 companies that have active programs or properties staked in the Kenora District, which includes Dryden. Many have arrived just in the last year.

The city decided to stake its own claim in the exploration frenzy.

In a smart economic development idea to attract explorationists, the city joined up with a group private land owners to assemble a consolidated land package inside a highly prospective former gold camp. The 1,100-hectare mix of city and private-owned land in Van Horne Township on the city's outskirts is on the spot of two closed-up, shallow gold mines.

Infrastructure-wise...