222 THE MINERAL RESOURCES OF CECIL COUNTY 



Springs, Maryland, and Pleasant Grove, Pennsylvania, are a series 

 of abandoned openings which have been made in search of chrome 

 ore. Some of these were successful and have received local names, 

 among which may be mentioned the " Line Pit," which was owned 

 in part and worked by th*> Tysons; the Jenkins Mine, Low's Mine, 

 owned and for some time worked successfully by Andrew Low and 

 Benjamin Gibson; West Pit, and Brown's Mine. From the very 

 first all of the chrome openings were operated by the Tysons or their 

 product was controlled by the trade conditions which were dominated 

 by them. 



Chrome sands were found, some of them of considerable richness, 

 in the stream-beds and valleys of the small streams draining the ser- 

 pentine area and they have been worked spasmodically for the 

 chrome ore which became concentrated in them because of the inde- 

 structible character and weight of the chromite compared with the 

 minerals with which it is associated in the parent rock. The last 

 worked deposit of chrome sand was on a. small tributary of Stone 

 Run at a point just south of the State line two miles north of Rising 

 Sun. Even this was abandoned in 1900. 



The industry which was established in Baltimore through the dis- 

 covery of the deposits of chrome ore in Maryland has continued even 

 after the local ore has been replaced by that from Asia Minor. 

 Chrome ore has been found also at various points within the United 

 State, notably California, but the American ore in all instances is no 

 longer mined because it is impossible to compete with the Asia 

 Minor product. 



Gold. 



It has long been known that gold occurs in finely disseminated 

 particles in many of the crystalline rocks of the Piedmont Plateau 

 and numerous attempts have been made to locate areas of sufficient 

 concentration to give a good return for the capital and labor invested. 

 The fact that there is a popular conception that money is made from 

 the mining of gold wherever the latter is found has given strong 

 inducements to unscrupulous men to promote gold excitements and 



