The Smoking Hills are located near
Cape Bathurst
on the Arctic Coast of the Northwest Territories. When Royal Navy
Captain Robert McClure explored the area in the 1850s, he thought that
the smoke on the shore came from a large number of campfires. Upon
further exploration, he found the smoke emerging from vents in the
ground. This stretch of land has rich veins of lignite near the surface.
As the land erodes, the lignite spontaneously catches fire when
exposed. The
CBC explains:
Here,
vast deposits of lignite -- concentrations of carbon-rich shale and
pyrite rich in sulphur - literally ignite spontaneously when the hills
erode and the mineral veins are exposed to the air, producing a constant
smoke. […]
The sailors are said to have returned with a sample of
the smoldering rock, and when they set it down on McClure's desk it
burned a hole in the wood.
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