Why did all the residents leave a town on the Alaska border without even turning off the lights?

When you picture a ghost town, you picture ruins: roofless houses, dirty broken windows, rotted floors… But in Kitsault, which is located on the north coast of British Columbia in Canada, you will find only continuous rows of perfectly preserved houses, shopping malls, restaurants, banks, pubs and theaters. All of them are abandoned and empty, but they look pristine and perfectly clean. The lights are always on, the streets are decorated with neatly trimmed trees, the lawns are manicured, but no one has called Kitsault home since 1982.

The town of Kitsault, near the Alaskan border, is 70 miles down a gravel road from Terrace. It didn’t last long. Its history began in 1979, when a community of molybdenum miners settled there. Molybdenum is added to various alloys to create hard, resistant carbides and is used to make steel stainless. But just when life was beginning to improve in this pristine mountain utopia, the molybdenum market collapsed and the town’s entire population of about 1,200 people fled.

This part of British Columbia, at the end of Observatory Bay, has been mined for precious and noble metals such as silver, lead, zinc and copper for almost a century. This has led to the formation of a number of rapidly growing towns, including Alice Arm and Anyox. Molybdenum was mined here from the late 60s to the early 70s, but mining stopped when company profits began to decline. By the late 70s, prices for the metal were rising again as reserves in Alaska, British Columbia and the western United States began to run out. American mining company Phelps Dodge decided to seize the opportunity.

A large tract of land, several hundred acres in size, was set aside for the town of Kitsault, and construction began on a scale unheard of in British Columbia. Ships arrived in Kitsault Sound with building materials. A gravel road was hastily built from Terrace through the mountains. Engineers and builders came from all over North America to take advantage of the high-paying jobs.

More than a hundred single-family homes and duplexes were built, as well as seven apartment buildings containing more than two hundred apartments. There was a modern hospital, a shopping center, restaurants, banks, a post office, a pub, a swimming pool, a library, two recreation centers with Jacuzzis and saunas, and a theater. Cable television and telephone lines were laid underground. The city had state-of-the-art water treatment facilities, and the cleanest water in the province flowed from the taps.

Barely 18 months after the first families moved in, the molybdenum market collapsed due to the crisis and the emergence of molybdenum byproducts. The mines closed, people began to leave, and Kitsault was forgotten.

In 2005, Indian-American entrepreneur Krishnan Suthanthiran bought the town for $7 million and began planning its revival. Since then, the millionaire has invested about $25 million in improvements and maintenance. About two dozen caretakers go around the houses and other buildings, checking their condition and making repairs. They mow the lawns, trim the trees, and sweep the streets.

Suthanthiran plans to recoup his investment by turning Kitsault into a hub for liquefied natural gas production in British Columbia. The town's future depends on the success of the gas project.