28 Bulletin of the New York State Museum. 



The most important group of mines in this district is that at Mine- 

 ville, in the town of Moriah, Essex county, seven miles west of, and 

 at a mean elevation of 1,300 feet above Lake Cham plain. The mines 

 are in two ranges, whose general strike is north-east. They have been 

 referred to an upper and a lower horizon by geologists.* The eastern 

 range includes Mine 21, Bonanza, Little Joker, Mine 23, Brinsmade 

 shaft, Old Bed and Miller Pit. These openings are in a drift-covered, 

 gently south-sloping area 2,500 feet long, from north-east to south- 

 west, and about 1,000 feet wide. 



The western range includes the mines opened at the south end and 

 in the eastern side of the Barton Hill ridge, and is about a half mile 

 west of the other range. 



Two companies work these mines at Mineville ; the Port Henry 

 Iron Ore Company and Witherbees, Sherman & Co. The former has 

 Brinsmade shaft, and Mine 23, and a part of Old Bed and the 21 

 mine ; the latter, Miller Pit, Bonanza and Little Joker, and the 

 western part of Old Bed and Mine 21, the property line running across 

 the ore bodies without reference to their position and geological rela- 

 tions. The mines of the western range belong to Witherbees, Sher- 

 man & Co., excepting those on Fisher Hill. 



The geological structure, revealed in the great openings on this 

 eastern or lower horizon of iron 'ore, appears to have been complicated 

 by faulting, folding and compressing agencies, which have resulted in 

 a serious distortion of the original beds. Hence the relations of the 

 several parts, and the correct shape of this great ore deposit are not 

 yet fully made out. 



The general direction of the clip of these ore masses is south-south- 

 west, but it is highly probable that the dip is westerly and that the 

 south-west inclination represents the pitch of the huge lenses of ore.f 



MINE 21 is south of the railway and consists of an open pit, 

 300 by 250 feet, and 250 feet deep and uudergiound workings to the 

 south and east, which are reached through Nolan's shaft, slopes 1, 2, 

 3 and 4, and Tefft's shaft at the west. 



The angle of the pitch as indicated in the rock on the east side is 

 about 30° to the south-west. The west side wall is quite irregular and 

 curving, as it were, the bounding wall of a great shoot of ore. The 



* Report of Charles E. Hall on "Laurentian Magnetic Iron Ore Deposits in North- 

 ern New York," in Thirty-second Annual Report IV. Y. /State Museum, p. 135. 



t According- to a well-known rule of occurrence in the magnetic iron ores of the 

 Highlands region of New York and New Jersey, the pitch is to the north-east when 

 the dip is easterly, and south-west when westerly. 



