368 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



tion resulted rather from the fact that the counties that 

 are now the leaders in production had not started min- 

 ing, rather than from the fact that LaSalle County pro- 

 duced so much. The greatest amount of coal produced 

 in the whole Northern Illinois Field was in 1913, when 

 4,697,000 tons were mined. This seems rather insignifi- 

 cant when compared with the 12,723,000 tons produced 

 by Franklin County alone in 1921. In that year (1921) 

 the Northern Field produced 2,041,000 tons and LaSalle 

 County produced 614,000 tons. However, in the period 

 from 1881 to 1921, the Northern Field produced a total 

 of more than 118,000,000 tons, and this furnished fuel 

 for developing a rather highly diversified and quite ex- 

 tensive industrial area. 



As stated above, the immediate vicinity of LaSalle was 

 a pioneer in coal mining on a commercial scale in the 

 state. The relatively small production of coal in the 

 field compared with that in other fields farther south in 

 the state is due largely to the fact that the coal veins in 

 the Northern Field are thin veins, averaging only 3 ft. 

 8 inches, whereas in the fields farther south the veins 

 vary from 5 to 10 feet or more in thickness, averaging 

 6 to 8 feet in many mines. It is much cheaper to mine 

 coal from veins of this thickness than from thin veins; 

 therefore the industry has shifted very largely to those 

 newer and more profitable fields. The mines near La- 

 Salle do not now supply enough coal to furnish the in- 

 dustrial plants so that coal from the fields farther south 

 in the state are shipped into the region. 



2. Zinc Smelting. 



There are two large zinc smelting plants located in La- 

 Salle and Peru, and another at Depue, eleven miles west 

 of LaSalle. The Matthiesen-Hegeler Company was the 

 first to establish a zinc smelting plant in the city. This 

 was in 1858, a date nearly contemporaneous with the 

 sinking of the first coal shaft in the region. The zinc ore 

 was brought from the mines in southwestern "Wisconsin 

 or northwestern Illinois in the early years of the smelt- 

 ing industry in the region. As LaSalle is located on the 

 northern edge of the Illinois Coal fields, it was the first 

 place where the zinc ore, being shipped east or south. 



