Courtesy of the Chester County Historical Society.          

Oxford Press
13th July 1933

Hunting for Magnesia Deposits

J. J. Rutledge, working for the Maryland Geological Survey, was in Oxford on Tuesday to secure information regarding the location of deposits of magnesite (magnesia) in the “Barrens.”  He called on Dr. John F. Rose, the prominent local geologist, who gave the information and also exhibited fine specimens of the mineral.  Mr. Rutledge said the Doctor’s collection of minerals is the most extensive and finest private collection he has yet seen.

Magnesia is found in small quantities outside of Austria and Greece and when imported to this country is expensive.  The chief deposits in the United States are in the “Goat Hill” locality and other parts of West Nottingham township, Chester county, Pa.  “Goat Hill” is now owned by Powers & Weightman and Rosengarten and Company, the firm of manufacturing chemists, Philadelphia.  Many years ago large quantities of magnesia were mined and shipped to the city.  Of late years nothing has been done and the deposits remain undeveloped.  In brief it is believed that deep development would expose large quantities and better quality of the mineral.

Dr. Rose, whose mineral knowledge of the “Barrens” is extensive, recalls the fact that twelve years ago Dr. Ludwig Preusseur of the University of Berlin, Germany, visited him on a similar mission, that of developing the local deposits of magnesia.  Professor Preusseur accompanies Dr. Rose on mineral trips in the “barrens” and was favorably impressed with local conditions.  All attempts on the part of the Professor to lease the property from Powers & Weightman, who then owned it, were unsuccessful.

Mr. Rutledge left Oxford in the evening for the purpose of making his headquarters in Rising Sun. Md.  From there he will make frequent trips into the barrens.

Coatesville Record
9th September 1937

Another attempt to resume operations at the chromite mines in Fulton and Little Britain townships, in Lancaster county, and in West Nottingham township, in Chester county, will be made in the near future by the American Chrome company, with headquarters in Philadelphia.

The first operation will be started at the mine on the farm of Jesse Wood on the west side of the East Branch of the Octoraro creek in Little Britain township.  The work was to be started today but Mr. Wood said the machinery has not yet been delivered.  It was understood, however, that the machinery had reached Nottingham.

Abandoned in 1884

An attempt to operate the mine during the World War was made by the Bethlehem Steel company but due to numerous difficulties the work of clearing the mine, which was abandoned in 1884, was halted.  The mining rights were originally held by the Tyson Mining company, of Baltimore, which later, according to reports, sold them to the Octoraro Water and Power company along with the water rights. The Octoraro company also owns 440 acres on the east bank of the creek, opposite the Wood farm, which it purchased at the same time it secured the rights to the Wood farm, about 1903.

The chromite mines in Lancaster and Chester counties are reputed to be the largest in the United States and it is believed that the yield would exceed any of the chromite mines in the world if they could be reopened.  The earliest worked deposits of chromite were those in the serpentine of the Bare Hills, near Baltimore. It is now mined in Southern Rhodesia, Quebec, New California [Caledonia?], India, Greece, Asia Minor, Ural Mountains and California.  It is also found at Hoboken, N.J., and in various parts of North Carolina.

Last year the Bethlehem Steel company made an investigation at an old mine in West Nottingham township, but nothing more was heard of the work after the drill was removed.

Largest of Group

The mine on the Wood farm is reported to be the largest of the group.  The valuable metal was discovered there the day the Tyson company decided to abandoned its work, according to old timers.  During the World war, the government is reported to have spent $80,000 attempting to sieve the metal from the Black run.

Chromite is a member of the spinel group of minerals, an oxide of chromium and ferrous iron.  It is the chief commercial source of chromium and its compounds.  It crystallizes in regular octahedra, but it usually found as grains or as granular to compact masses.  In its iron-black color with sub-metallic lustre and absence of cleavage it resembles magnetite (magnetic iron ore) in appearance, but differs from this in being only slightly if at all magnetic and in the brown color of its powder.

The theoretical formula corresponds with chromic oxide and ferrous oxide.  The ferrous oxide is, however, usually partially replaced by magnesia and chromic oxide by alumina and ferric oxide, so that there may be a gradual passage to picotite and chrome-spinel.  Much of the material mined as ore does not contain more than 40to 50 per cent of chromic oxide.

Chrome-iron ore is largely used in the preparation of chromium compounds for use as pigments (chrome=yellow etc.) and in calico printing.

Oxford Press
23rd November 1938

Mineral Ridge Mining Company

West Nottingham people await the intended development of an iron ore property in their township, so rumor says.  It is the Harvey Spencer property of some 40 acres which, report goes, is a great bed of valuable iron ore some distance below the surface.  The projectors of the enterprise compose the Mineral Ridge Mining Company, capital $150,000, Joseph Black of Columbia is president and other officers and directors are men known in business as careful investors.  The manager of the company is a party by the name of Wallace, who has had western mining experience and is now there arranging matters prior to operations in the barrens.

Coatesville Record
5th December 1940

The Greek-Italian war and the threat of war in other Balkan states may cause a once flourishing Chester County industry to be revived.  Already it is said there are indications that something may be done very soon.

This industry is the mining of chrome which is a vital factor in the manufacturing of certain kinds of steels that are used for war purposes.  At one time, not so many years ago, there were flourishing chrome mines in East Nottingham township south of Oxford, but for some time they have not been worked because chrome could be obtained cheaper elsewhere.

In recent years the steel industry has been getting its supply of chrome from Greece, Jugoslavia, and Turkey, where for some reason a better quality of chrome could be had for less than it could be produced here.  As a result the Chester County mine shave not been worked, although at different times efforts have been made to work them in competition with the Balkan mines.

There is not much doubt that the supply of Balkan chrome will be cut off if the war spreads much further in that part of the world, and even there is great difficulty in transporting it.  This means that sooner or later and perhaps sooner an effort will be made to find a supply in this country even if it does cost more to produce, and the old mines of Chester County will, no doubt, be one of the spots that will be investigated first.

Whether or not there is much chrome left in Chester County is a question that has never been answered, but many experienced miners feel that there is.  According to mineralogists Chester County has a greater variety of minerals within her borders than any similar area in the entire world.  However the quantities necessarily cannot be great.  At the same time it is certain that her mineral resources have not even yet been completely explored.

Oxford Press
18th June 1941

Uncle Sam is spending $10,000 to bring back the old chrome mines of southern Lancaster county.

Foot by foot, U. S. geologists are worrying out the secrets of deep-hidden deposits of chromite with the aid of instrument so delicate that if you stand on the ground beside one of them and shift your weight from one foot to the other, the indicator needles dip.

America needs chrome - needs it even more as the long sea lanes by which the crucial metal has been coming to this country close one by one.  America needs chrome for the super-hard steel in a dozen kinds of armament and most particularly to line the barrels of rapid-fire anti-aircraft guns whose fierce heat will melt any other metal used says the Lancaster Sunday News.

That’s why you won’t have elaborate chrome grills on your 1942 car – if any.  Deposits of chrome have been found in four far-western states, but always in such remote places that it is almost impossible to get out.

So that’s why down on the 200 acre forest and farmland around the historic Woods Mine near New Texas, the prospectors are hard at work.  They’re U. S. Geological Survey men, working with the cooperation of the U. S. Department of mines and the Pennsylvania Department of Internal Affairs.

Tripping over an outcrop of chromite used to be the most effective way of finding the stuff, and enough was located on the Woods tract in years past to amass several sizeable fortunes.  But today finding the ore is a different problem.

If America is to defend herself from air attack with chrome from the barrens of Lancaster County, it will be because of a couple of German-built precision instruments, one of them lent by a Swedish-Canadian geologist.

As Wallace Lee, U. S. geologist heading the survey grumbles, “The instrument is wonderful.  If you had a pile of ten million pennies, and took one away, the gravimeter would show the difference.  But why is thunder doesn’t the United States start making instruments of its own?  If this one breaks an expert repairman from Canada has to be rushed here to fit it.”

He’s convinced that American brains, if started on the job of perfecting these precision instruments, could surpass Germany, to which their making has always been conceded without much attempt to research on the subject here.

That’s why the two men who carry the gravimeter – lent free of charge by Hans Lundberg of Canada – tread so gingerly across the reviving ghosts of the old mining industry.  They sling it between them on two poles, and its 128 pounds of compact machinery are borne along on very firm and considered footsteps over the roughest kind of ground.  It’s worth $10,000.

So delicate is the instrument that a passing breeze can disturb its balance.  It’s windy around midday and early afternoon, so the geologists work only mornings and evenings and even then they carry along a tepee-like tent which is frequently hoisted around the prima donna gadget.

To get an idea of how it works, you’ll have to imagine a scales so tricky that it would weigh a pork chop when the pig walked underneath it. That’s the method – the instrument is set solidly on a small platform atop stakes firmly set in the soil, and it records the weight of the rock beneath it.  It’s possible because a heavier rock exercises stronger gravitational soil [sic].
Varying depths can be charted.

This saves a little matter of digging a hole twenty or thirty feet deep to see what’s down there.  When the survey is coordinated, inside of about two weeks, drills will be brought in to check the charts now being made up.  These will be a combination of the gravimeter’s evidence and that of a magnetometer.

While the gravimeter tells the weight, or density of the rock between the surface of the soil, the magnetometer reveals its magnetic properties.  By comparing these, geologists hope to be able to show the drillers exactly where chromite may be expected.  Even a third method will probably be used in a triple-check before the exhaustive survey is finished.  This is the earth resistivity meter, a device which records the ability of the rocks beneath to conduct electricity.

The magnetometer, a smallish box worth a mere $1,000, is mounted on a surveyor’s tripod.  The gravimeter is much more elaborate, though still quite compact.  It has many layers of insulation around the delicately balanced machinery inside and storage batteries keep the temperature there even to the tiny fraction of a degree.

The magnetometer measures one part in 40,000 while the gravimeter measures one part in 80,000,000 and the resistivity meter one part in 100,000.  So the Lundberg-lent instrument is depended on to give the most accurate clues to the presence of chrome ore.

The de luxe doodlebug is expected to show just where the ore may be found because of the geological nature of the stuff.  It always occurs in serpentine rock.

Serpentine which crops out near the place where the Lancaster – Chester border meets the Mason-Dixon line is part of a great strip of this rock which extends clear down to the coastal plain of Georgia.  Chromite might occur any place along the line.  However, the geologists know it has been found in Lancaster county, so here is the most logical place to look for more, particularly since there are probably quantities of the ore which the old-time miners could never have suspected was there 75 years ago when the Woods mine was in its glory.

Serpentine weighs about 2.6 times as much as water, while chromite weighs over four times as much as water, so that the difference in density will show up sharply on the dials.

Nearness to the great steel plants of the East makes the Lancaster chrome field vastly more important than those of California, Oregon, Montana, and Wyoming, the only other states where chromite has been found.  Invariably the possible mine sites in those states would be so far from transportation facilities that mining the ore would be impractible.

As for foreign sources, one is in Rhodesia, a British possession in Africa, another is in New Caledonia, French, and another is in Turkey.  Bethlehem Steel owns deposits in Cuba, closest of all.  But even might become a dangerously long haul in time of a sea-war, to which the sinking of an American ship in mid-Atlantic furnishes a threatening preview.

Many times since the fabulous chrome mines closed down in the late 1860’s the rumor has spread that they would be reopened.  Excitement has been justified, for the mines yielded between 100,000 and 125,000 tons of chromite worth some $10,000,000 in their prime.

Woods mine was the biggest, but scores of other shafts were suck in the vicinity by Isaac Tyson, Jr., “Chrome king of the world.”  His monopoly of chrome makes that of the Mellons over aluminum look sick, Lee says.  Nobody else had a look-in during his lifetime. For many years Lancaster mines produced the entire world’s supply of chrome.  Then other deposits turned up in remote sections of California and Tyson bought them up immediately.

Never was the chromite smelted down and made into actual metal during the Tyson regime, although he spent millions of dollars trying to accomplish it.  The value of chrome was a pigment in paints, and for making bi-chromates.

When he died in 1865 he left his tremendous estate to a pair of sons, in effect disinheriting two other sons, a daughter, and his widow.  Litigation dragged though the courts until the rich mines were abandoned and the Tyson interests ruined.  Since then Tyson heirs have made one effort to recoup their fortunes by reopening the Woods Mine, and they were able to find and dig out a body of chrome 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 85 feet deep, now a great cavity in one wall of the shaft.

Not until 1937 was another real effort made to reopen the workings. [A com]pany controlled largely by Lancaster men, pumped a large quantity of water out of the Woods shaft.  However, it was discovered that keeping the mine dry would require pumping equipment too costly to justify the investment.

So once again it seemed as though a layer of dust would gather upon equipment on the Woods tract, as it has accumulated over the crude old pumps and windlasses and horse-powered equipment of three quarters of a century ago, when candles were the only light by which miners could work and ore was hauled in big wagons to the docks of Baltimore.

Daily Local News
19th July 1941

Prospecting for chrome and other valuable mineral deposits continues in the “Barrens” and near Nottingham.  Boring in the Woods meadow by representatives of the bureau of Mines, have reached 174 feet.  Much interest is taken in its research work being done in this serpentine rock strip, but not much information is gleaned by those visiting the scenes of activities.

Oxford Press
19th August 1942

That non-agricultural strip known as The Barrens lying along the Mason-Dixon Line in Pennsylvania, to the west of route 1, has been sold by Wheeler & Grier to a private individual purchasing for a New Jersey corporation.  Arthur Reynolds of Sylmar owned this tract of between 400 and 500 acres which at one time belonged to the Tyson Mining Company.

This region abounds in outcroppings of different ores at one time produced an endless supply of spar, and is said to hold ores bearing most of all kinds of minerals known to science.  However, the pay dirt has never been much of a money maker except for a few instances.

But this time the new owners know what they want and they also know it’s there!  It is reported they plan to take out rock which is a by-product of the spar mining operations.  This will be ground and used in construction similar to the production and use of cement.

Prospecting for chrome has also been carried on in this section on different occasions within the past few years, and only last summer a United States Government expedition sunk a test shaft on the fringe of the tract, the actual results of which have not been made public.

As time goes by occasional flashes of good news come from the Barrens, and now that a large portion in the hands of industrialists, it may be safe to predict that the Barrens may provide something more vital than mountain pink, rabbits and rumors.

Oxford Press
2nd December 1948

… No more authentic setting for hunting could be imagined than this wilderness [serpentine barrens]. Miles in length and extensive in depth at portions much of this country in un-trod upon by man.  Although at one time or another trails have pierced it and houses and some farms have come as roads have been extended through it, there is also much that is dense undergrowth and is not habited.  It is a primitive land set among fertile country.

Chief attraction was drawn to the Barrens several years ago when chrome was discovered beneath its surface.  For a long period this was dug and shipped from Oxford and towns to the south.  The deposits then became exhausted and the material decreased in value.  Thus the land fell into disuse and became of little commercial value.  The thickets grew again and it became ideal cover for deer.