THE LEAD AND ZINC REGION OF MISSO URI AND KANSAS. 331 
County, and the eastern end of Cherokee County, Kansas, and to the area dramed 
by the three streams, Center Creek, Turkey Creek, and Shoal Creek, which flow- 
west and north and empty into Spring River within six miles of each other. In 
this region, the towns of Granby, on the south, and Joplin, on the north, are 
the centers of the principal mining activity. A very careful and intelligent ac- 
count of this region, -so far as it had then been developed, is to be found in the 
report of Dr. Adolf Schmidt and Mr. Alexander Leonhard, published in the 
Geological Report of the State of Missouri for the year 1873-74, to which the 
reader is referred. Work on the survey was interrupted in 1876, and has not 
since been resumed, for which reason few reliable statistics have since been pub- 
lished. The importance of this region as a source of zinc ore dates from the 
year 187 1. In this year, the first regular shipments of ore were made from 
Granby to the zinc-furnaces at Carondelet. The discoveries of rich deposits of 
lead ore at Joplin in the same year, and their wonderfully rapid development, 
had also an immediate effect on the prosperity of this region. Here, as in Wis- 
consin, the discovery of zinc ore is proportional to the activity in prospecting for 
lead ore. The production of zinc ore for the year 1874 is given as 19,000 tons, 
and the present output is variously estimated at from 1,000 to 1,500 tons a week. 
There is no doubt that the latter figure is often reached, and could be maintained 
from present developments, except when mining is extensively interrupted either 
by wet weather or excessively low prices for lead or zinc ore ; or that more than 
two-thirds of the spelter made in this country comes from ore mined in this 
region. The ore is found in the sub-carboniferous formation, and there is an 
evident connection between the known deposits of ore and the present system of 
surface drainage. Dr. Schmidt observed, as a remarkable fact, that the largest 
deposits do not lie along the principal streams, but at the heads of the smaller 
tributaries. The deposits of Webb City, Carterville, Empire, Galena, Sherwood, 
Belleville, and Blende, discovered since his examination, and now the principal 
sources of zinc ore, fall under the same rule. These throw new light upon the 
character of the mineral formations, and seem to warrant increased confidence in 
their extent and depth. The most important zinc mines of this region are those 
at Carterville and Webb City, which are really parts of the same deposit. They 
produce more than half of the zinc ore raised, and are worked principally for 
zinc ore. 
As these deposits are very regular in their formation, and in a measure rule the 
ore market, and as the method of mining them is essentially the same as prevails 
throughout the entire district, a general description of them and the method of 
mining them will here be given. These mines lie in the open prairie, which was 
once cultivated in farms, about five miles northeast of Joplin, near the head of a 
small branch of Center Creek. They were discovered about the year 1877. 
Here, at a depth of from 40 to 100 feet, and often under a cap of limestone and 
flint 60 feet in thickness, has been found an immense deposit of zinc blende, 
which has been worked continuously for over half a mile. The deposit is in the 
^orm of a bed of flint, traversed in various directions by solid bars of barren flint 
