Bitumount
Bitumount is an abandoned industrial site on the east bank of the Athabasca River about north of Fort McMurray in northeastern Alberta, Canada. Between 1925 and the 1950s, it was the site of early attempts to extract bitumen from the Athabasca oil sands that contributed to the development of commercially viable extraction processes. The site closed permanently in 1958. Some of the structures at Bitumont were declared Provincial Historic Resources in 1974. As of 2017, the buildings are deteriorating. History Work at the site commenced after Robert Cosmas Fitzsimmons incorporated the International Bitumen Company Limited in 1925. Fitzsimmons named the site Bitumount, and by 1930 he had constructed a small oil extraction plant there. It was situated on the edge of the Athabasca River, which was the major transportation corridor in the region at that time. The raw oil sand was crushed and heated in hot water, and the oily substance that rose to the surface was skimmed off. The company made its first sale of bitumen in Edmonton in 1930, and the Edmonton Journal announced that "those shipments of absolutely pure bitumen are the first and second and only shipments in the history of McMurray tar sands to be