54 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



ment. The conditions are well suited for surface work by 

 stripping or trenching throughout much of the stretch from 

 Herkimer to western Wayne county. In places the ore is en- 

 countered directly beneath the soil or at most a few feet of 

 glacial materials, while with its flat dip there is often oppor- 

 tunity to extend the field of operations to considerable distances 

 from the outcrop before the overburden becomes excessive. 

 There is still an abundance of ore that can be removed to ad- 

 vantage by open-cut work. 



It is quite recently that mechanical methods of excavation 

 have been introduced, and the greater portion of the product in 

 the past has been won by the crude system of hand labor first 

 employed. With the use of portable steam shovels, the cost of 

 taking out the ore has been so reduced that it is now practicable 

 to strip fully twice as much rock as formerly, notwithstanding 

 the material reduction that has taken place in iron ore prices. 



An example of good practice in open-cut excavation is af- 

 forded by the recent operations of the Furnaceville Iron Co. at 

 Ontario Center. This company has been engaged in working 

 a strip of land lying to the north of that place and extending 

 for over 4 miles in an east and west line. The plan adopted here 

 consists briefly in opening longitudinal trenches, the first along 

 the northern limits of the property, near the outcrop, and the 

 following ones in parallel order progressively with the removal 

 of the ore from the preceding trench. At the present time about 

 20 feet of overburden is taken off, while in the first cut some 40 

 rods to the north the ore lay beneath 6 feet of soil and rock. 

 The trench has a width of 60 feet and until recently two shovels 

 were used in its excavation, each cutting 30 feet or one half the 

 whole width. The shovels loaded into buckets which were 

 hoisted by revolving derricks and dumped on the spoil bank 

 opposite the long face of the trench and just beyond the edge 

 of the ore that was being uncovered. The outer shovel worked 

 somewhat in advance. During the last year the trenching has 

 been done by a single 100-ton shovel which removes the rock^ 

 for a width of about 45 feet, dumping directly on the spoil banl 

 and then returns to clear the remainder with the aid of a der] 

 rick.^ The shovels and derricks are mounted to run on trackj 



* Since the above account was written, the methods have been somewhat modified i: 

 that a conveyor has been installed, as shown in the accompanying plates. The cod 

 veyor consists of a portable structure, with two skips each of 6 cubic yards capacity 

 which receive the rock material from the steam shovel and carry it up the incline 

 (129 feet long) to the dump. This apparatus increases the efficiency of the_ steam 

 shovel, at the same time enabling the latter to excavate the trench to the full width of 

 60 feet without return. 





