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Geraldton, ON, population centre, population 1,761 (2021 census), 1,838 (2016 census). Incorporated as a town in 1937, Geraldton was amalgamated with several other communities in 2001 to create the Municipality of Greenstone. Geraldton is situated in northwestern Ontario, 282 km northeast of Thunder Bay, and was once on the Canadian National Railway. Established in the early 1930s as a consequence of the Little Long Lac gold rush, the town derived its name from its two co-founders, mining entrepreneurs J.S. FitzGerald and Joseph Errington.
History
At the height of the boom in the later 1930s, Geraldton acted as a service centre to a dozen gold-mining camps as well as to the developing pulpwood industry in the area. The major mine was Macleod-Cockshutt, which in its nearly 30-year existence extracted more than $49 million of gold. Its closure in the late 1960s contributed to the gradual decline in Geraldton's population from a high of 3,588 in 1965.
