O'Donnell is a ghost town and former industrial area inside the city of Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, which today is located on property owned by Vale Limited. It was located along the Algoma Eastern Railway line between two mine sites, Crean Hill and Gertrude. It functioned as a brief offshoot of the nearest major settlement along the line, the Inco company town of Copper Cliff, which today is a suburb of Sudbury.
Origins and growth
In the 1910s, the landscape around Copper Cliff was dominated by large open-air roast yards. At the time, roasting was a labour-intensive activity which involved workers bringing ore to the yards in wheelbarrows, piling it, and manually spreading it before removing the roasted ore once again. This required a large workforce, and roasting activities were initially done close to the town.[1] However, this process devastated large areas around the yards, and concerns began to increase about the long-term health implications of air pollution near roast yards, so the decision was made by the Canadian Copper Company to move its roast yards from Copper Cliff to a new site along the Algoma Eastern Railway