Kiks — Geology of Orange County. 



471 



many active mines. The majority of these are no longer in operation, owing 

 to the poor quality of the ore and the cost of operating them. In many 

 instances the ore had to be hauled three or four miles. The two active 

 mines are the Forest-of-Dean, in Woodbury township, and the mines of the 

 Sterling Iron and Railway Company in Tuxedo township, at the southern 

 end of Sterling lake. The Sterling mines were in operation during the 

 Revolutionary war and have so continued since. Many openings have been 

 made in the area around the lake, and abandoned after being worked to 

 various depths. The company owns 20,000 acres of land and the following 

 mines are on it; Crawford, Behring, Moorhead, California, Sterling, Clark, 

 Lake, Oregon, Spruce Swamp, Hard, Cook, Scott, Mountain, Causeway, Long 

 and Augusta. The oldest and most important is the Sterling mine which 

 was opened in 1750, and a furnace built in 1751. The ore-body is of large 

 size and, according to Smock*, has undulating foot- walls, the rolls running 

 N. E. and S. W. There is said to be a fault on the south side of the mine 

 by which the ore is displaced ten feet. At present the slope of the Sterling 

 mine has gone down 1000 feet on the dip. Levels are run off every fifty 

 feet (see figure) and after all the levels are driven, lifts will be sunk 

 between them. The thickness of the bed varies from five to twelve feet 

 and the ore is sharply defined from the walls. 



The Lake mine lies to the north of the Sterling and evidently is a 

 portion of the same ore-bed which has been divided by a pinch. This pinch, 

 is about 250 feet long. The slope of the Lake mine, which descends 

 diagonally on the dip, is 1100 feet long and the ore-body extends under the 

 lake. The wall-rock of these two mines is a hornblendic gneiss; associated 

 w ith the magnetite along the border of the ore-body are -amphi bole, pyroxene, 

 epidote, red and white feldspar, tourmaline and quartz. Beautiful inter- 

 growths of quartz and tourmaline are common. 



The Sterling ore averages sixty per cent, iron and four per cent, phos- 

 phorus; the Lake mine, fifty-nine percent, iron and nine per cent, phosphorus, 

 while the monthly output of the two mines is respectively 4ooo tons and 

 2000 tons. 



Compressed air is used to operate the drills and one of the compressors 

 is run by water-power derived from Sterling lake. Plate XLII shows the 

 surface workings of the mines, the dump-heaps seen up the hill being from 

 the quarry workings of some of the abandoned ones, for the ore-body of tin- 

 Lake and Sterling mines formerly extended up the surface of the hill, there 



* The Iron Ores of New York. -Bulletin New York State Museum, Vol. II , Number 7. 



