MINERALS AND MINING IN NEW YORK STATE 

 D. H. Newland, Albany, N. Y. 



Assistant State Geologist 



New York State is richly endowed with subsurface deposits of 

 ores and minerals that, like its soils, yield a wide variety of prod- 

 ucts. The value of mineral materials taken out each year is well 

 over $50,000,000. This is the sum of about thirty-five different 

 items, in their crude forms mostly, and is well above the average 

 outturn, or even exceeding the production of many states that are 

 more particularly associated in the popular mind with an active 

 mineral industry. 



The absence of gold and silver in the list of products is no doubt 

 partly responsible for the tendency to depreciate the importance 

 of mining among the industrial activities of the state. Somehow, 

 the precious metals are the first to be considered in connection 

 with underground explorations. Yet they afford a small, and on 

 the whole a rather unprofitable, basis for industry, requiring the 

 application of the best mechanical equipment and the keenest 

 metallurgical knowledge to extract them successfully from their 

 ores. This applies particularly to gold, which, as a field of activ- 

 ity, is probably the least remunerative of any kind of mining. 

 There is no basis whatever for anticipating that gold, silver, or 

 platinum will ever be obtained in a commercial way from any 

 local deposits, and all the efforts in that direction on which many 

 hundred thousands of dollars have been spent in the last few 

 years are idle, if not to be characterized by harsher terms. 



Ono of the substantial branches of mining that has been carried 

 on in New York for a century and a half, and still has capacity 

 for growth, is that of iron. The ores are widely distributed, 

 including magnetite in the Adirondacks and southeastern High- 

 lands ; hematite in central New York, represented by the Clinton 

 hods ; and limonite and siderite in Dutchess and Columbia coun- 

 ties. Mine operations are in progress at present in Essex, Clin- 

 ton, St. Lawrence, Orange, Oneida, and Wayne counties. The 

 output of iron ore in 1917 was 1.356,011 long tons, valued at 



$7,381,333. 



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