A city once home to about 4,000 people, complete with schools, a church, a shopping mall, and an arena, was entirely erased from the map in just a few months. This town, known as Gagnon, was founded in 1957 by Quebec Cartier to mine iron from Lake Jeannine. At its peak, the town housed workers and their families who depended on the iron industry. However, when the mine closed in 1985, the town was completely abandoned and demolished. Between 1985 and 1986, around 1,000 buildings were destroyed. Today, only a few remnants remain, such as sidewalks, concrete curbs, rusted manhole covers, and the airport runway along Route 389. There are no museums or visible ruins to mark the town's history. Gagnon was officially established on January 28, 1960, and named after Onésime Gagnon, a former Quebec minister and lieutenant governor. The town was built to support the workers who would extract iron from the region. By 1977, the iron reserves in Lake Jeannine were nearly gone, but the arrival of the company Sidbec-Normines allowed operations to shift to the Fire Lake mine, about 100 kilometers northeast. This temporary solution did not last long, as towns built around a single industry are inherently vulnerable to changes in that resource. The global iron crisis in the early 1980s led to the closure of Gagnon and the nearby Fire Lake. On October 11, 1984, the mine was officially shut down, with the closure taking effect by June 30, 1985. This decision included the complete demolition of the city. Sidbec-Normines, the company that operated the mine, paid off the town's debts, bought out local businesses and homes, and offered $15,000 to each employee to help them move on. Nearly 1,000 buildings were either relocated or completely destroyed, with some moved to nearby towns like Port-Cartier. The summer of 1985 marked the beginning of the town’s end. Schools, the health clinic, and local police services stopped operating. Water, telephone, and electricity services were cut off in the following months. Demolition began in late July 1985 and continued through 1986, affecting nearly every street in the city. Even the church, a central part of community life, was dismantled, with its bell tower moved elsewhere. It took until 1987 to complete Route 389, which now passes through the area that once was Gagnon’s heart. Today, what remains of Gagnon is nearly nothing. Travelers moving along Route 389 toward Fermont or Labrador pass through a surreal landscape: a network of empty roads still visible amid the forest reclaiming the land. Concrete curbs outline empty lots, and rusted manhole covers and fire hydrants occasionally appear from the ground, the only remnants of a once-thriving urban network. The main road and the airport runway, both adjacent to Route 389, are all that remain of the town. The site has become an open-air historical monument, without plaques or buildings, yet it stands as a strange reminder of a city that once lived and then vanished on command.