The Magnetite Belt at Cranberry^ N. C. — Kimball. 301 
the Cranberry mines. With the discovery and even natural 
development of the ore deposits, the configuration of the sur- 
face has liad much to do. This likewise comes into view in 
considering either possible future discoveries along exten- 
sions of the Cranberry ore belt, or the relations of the so- 
called Roan Mountain ore belt of east Tennessee. 
The narrow bottom of Cranberrj' creek some 50 feet below 
the mines is occupied by the iron works and railroad (E. 
Tenn. & W. N. C.) both built by the Cranberry Iron and Coal 
Co., of Philadelphia, and operated as well as the mines by 
that company. The works consist of a single small blast fur- 
nace, built in the 3'^ear 1884, making about twenty tons of iron 
per day from a 43 per cent, ore, ordinarily with Flat-top or 
Pocahontas coke. The furnace is chiefly remarkable for its 
production of iron with a tenor of phosphorus as low as 0.020 
per cent, from an ore of comparatively^ low grade, an achive- 
ment in regular practice probably unequalled in the country. 
This result is due not only to the remarkably minute propor- 
tion of this deleterious substance in the furnace stock, but to 
the (!are and skill exercised by the president, Mr. Frank 
Firmstoneof P]aston, Pa., who has devoted much personal at- 
tention at the furnace to the production of iron of high grade. 
The Cranberry ore belt enters conformably into the struc- 
ture of the series of crystalline schists in Cranberry ridge. 
This structure is a succession of folds whose longer axes are 
transverse to the axis of the Cranberry bottom or to the trend 
of the ridge itself. The strike of the ore belt, conformably 
to the axes of the folds, is N. W.-S.E. The dip accordingly is ( 
southwest and at an average of 45*^./ A ravine down the side 
of the ridge, opening out into the Cranberry bottom, has 
eroded the reverse or northeast dip of the anticline into which 
the ore belt enters, so that the ground compassed by the 
Cranberry workings presents simply a monoclinal structure. 
The topographical position of the mines may therefore be 
further described as on the southwest side of a cross ravine 
heading near the crest of Cranberry ridge as indicated b}'^ a 
minor depression or wind gap. 
The zone of rock decay is so deep in this region that petro- 
graphic studies are far from satisfactory. For this reason I 
have not attempted to correlate tiie surrounding schists. I 
