It previously held the status of a village until April 1, 1950.
[1] The community was informally founded in 1936 by prospectors after the 1934 discovery of gold on the north shore of Lake Athabasca.
With the closure of the Box Mine during World War II, Goldfields became a ghost town.
Uranium was then discovered in 1948 and a new mining community was built at Uranium City, a few kilometers to the north of Lake Athabasca.
Many buildings from Goldfields were salvaged and moved to the new town in the 1950s.