Joutel is a ghost town

Ghost town

A ghost town is an abandoned town or city. A town often becomes a ghost town because the economic activity that supported it has failed, or due to natural or human-caused disasters such as floods, government actions, uncontrolled lawlessness, war, or nuclear disasters...

 in the Canadian

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 province of Quebec

Quebec

Quebec or is a province in east-central Canada. It is the only Canadian province with a predominantly French-speaking population and the only one whose sole official language is French at the provincial level....

, located in the municipality of Baie-James off Route 109

Quebec route 109

Route 109 is a Quebec provincial highway that runs through the western regions of Abitibi-Témiscamingue and Nord-du-Québec. It begins at Route 117 in Rivière-Héva, proceeding north approximately to Amos. From there, the highway extends to Matagami, where the road continues northwards as James Bay...

 between Amos

Amos, Quebec

Amos is a ville in northwestern Quebec, Canada, on the Harricana River. It is the seat of Abitibi Regional County Municipality.Amos is the main city on the Harricana River, and the smallest of the three primary cities — after Rouyn-Noranda and Val-d'Or — in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region of Quebec...

 and Matagami

Matagami, Quebec

Matagami is a small town in Quebec, Canada. It is located north of Amos, on Matagami Lake, at the northern terminus of Route 109 and the start of the James Bay Road . The town had a population of 1,555 in the Canada 2006 Census.-History:Matagami was founded in 1963 with the development of mining...

.

First established in 1965 due to the opening of gold

Gold

Gold is a chemical element with the symbol Au and an atomic number of 79. Gold is a dense, soft, shiny, malleable and ductile metal. Pure gold has a bright yellow color and luster traditionally considered attractive, which it maintains without oxidizing in air or water. Chemically, gold is a...

, copper

Copper

Copper is a chemical element with the symbol Cu and atomic number 29. It is a ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. Pure copper is soft and malleable; an exposed surface has a reddish-orange tarnish...

 and zinc

Zinc

Zinc , or spelter , is a metallic chemical element; it has the symbol Zn and atomic number 30. It is the first element in group 12 of the periodic table. Zinc is, in some respects, chemically similar to magnesium, because its ion is of similar size and its only common oxidation state is +2...

 mines in the area, the community was named for early French explorer Henri Joutel, and had a population of several hundred residents at its peak. In the early 1970s, media services were brought to the community, including rebroadcasters of CKRN-TV

CKRN-TV

CKRN-DT is a television station in Rouyn-Noranda, Quebec. Owned and operated by RNC Media, it is a private affiliate of Radio-Canada and basically functions as a semi-satellite of Montreal Radio-Canada flagship station CBFT-DT due to not having alternative non-network sources of programming...

 and CBF-FM

CBF-FM

CBF-FM-10 in Sherbrooke and CBF-FM-8 in Trois-Rivières were once full satellites of CBF-FM, but have been separately licenced since 2000 , despite still having rebroadcaster-like callsigns...

. However, the community was abandoned by 1998, when the ore reserves were depleted enough that the mines were no longer profitable.

As of 2011, the CKRN rebroadcaster that served Joutel is still in operation, to serve a number of recreational properties and rural residents in the surrounding area.