120 CORUNDUM, ITS OCCURRENCE AND DISTRIBUTION. 
Tlie saprolitic ore is readily cleaned, and furnishes a nearly pure 
commercial product. A small mill has been erected here. 
Reed or Watauga mine. — At this mine, which is G^ miles east of 
Franklin on the Dillsboro road, just above A¥atauga Creek, corundum 
has been found in a dike of saprolitic rock that was very probably 
originally an amphibolite. The country rock is a hornblende-gneiss, 
but in the direct vicinity of the dike no solid rock is encountered. 
The general occurrence is somewhat similar to that at the Isbel mine, 
in Clay County, and at the Acme mine, in Iredell Comity. The 
corundum is in prismatic crystals from the size of buckwheat grains 
to some that were nearly half an inch in diameter. The crystals 
are of an almost uniform pale-bluish color and some are semitrans- 
parent to transparent. The ore was readily cleaned and furnished 
a nearly pure product. The mill at this mine had a capacity of 3 
tons per day. As at all the localities where the occurrence is in an 
amphibolite, the quantity of the corundum is very limited. On the 
opposite side of Watauga Creek, 100 to 200 feet up the mountain 
slope, corundum has been found in a number of places in the gneiss. 
No Avork has been done at this mine since 1898. 
CLAY COUNTY. 
Buck Creek or Cidlakeenee mine. — This mine is in the Buck Creek 
Valley, about 20 miles southwest of P'ranklin, Macon County, and 21 
miles a little north of east of Hayesville, the county seat of Clay 
County. These corundum deposits are associated wdth a compact 
mass of peridotite, covering about three-quarters of a square mile, 
the largest mass that is known in the Appalachian belt. Fig. S 
(p. 36) is a topographic map of this formation, and shows the 
i-elation of the amphibolite to the peridotite and the location of the 
various openings that have been made for corundum. There has 
been but very little systematic mining for corundum in this locality 
and most of the work has been in the nature of prospecting. Numer- 
ous cuts and pits have been made at a great many points on the 
formation, most of which have shown the presence of corundum 
The principal work is at the east end of the formation, near the con- 
tact of the peridotite with the gneiss, where a shaft 40 feet deep waj 
sunk partially on the border vein. X number of open cuts in thij 
same vicinity have penetrated into the same vein. This vein h 
different from most of the corundum veins in the peridotite rocks 
in that it is composed essentially of plagioclase feldspar and horn 
blende, Avhich bear a similar relation to each other as the feldspar 
quartz, and mica in the pegmatitic dikes. PI. XIII, A^ is a genera 
view of the Buck Creek formation, showing the shaft mine and th( 
location of the border vein that has been opened. With this excep 
tion all the pits and cuts that have been made are within the forma 
