ECONOMIC RESOURCES 

 (a) Natural Resources 



Mineral: There are only two mineral resources to be mentioned^ 

 gold and building stone. Neither of these is at present of very great 

 commercial importance. It has long been a tradition in many parts of 

 the county that gold was to be found there. In several localities there 

 has been some prospecting. In all but one instance this has come to 

 nothing. The Sandy Spring Annalist, speaking for that neighborhood, 

 expresses the situation for most of the county, when she writes of "the 

 ine\'itable three degrees of mining speculation in this vicinity — positive, 

 mine; comparative, minor; superlative, minus." In the Potomac Dis- 

 trict, however, gold-mining has been somewhat more profitable. Here 

 there are two gold-mines not far from the Great Falls of the Potomac 

 River which have been worked intermittently since 1887. From ^40,000 

 to ^50,000 worth of gold is said to have been taken from them to date. 

 A report on this property by a geological expert states that "at the 

 present time the property is still in the prospective stage as the develop- 

 ment work so far performed is confined to the surface. The work done 

 on the main vain has demonstrated satisfactory gold values in several 

 places. . . . There is no geological reason w^hy gold should not be 



I A KM UAKN 



