34 GOLD AND TIN DEPOSITS OF SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS. 
enterprise almost since its beginning and who had purchased or leased considerable land 
along the tin belt. 
Interest was revived early in 1902, when Capt. S. S. Ross, of Gaffney, S. C, found cassit- 
erite float on his farm 1^ miles northeast of Gaffney, considerably farther southwest than 
tin had been known before. The tin-bearing formation was located and found to contain 
a promising amount of the metal. The actual shipment of a carload of concentrates to 
England in 1903 brought the Ross mine into prominence and served to stimulate prospect- 
ing in other parts of the region. Carpenter and Rudisill again took up prospecting and 
soon sold what is now the Jones mine, near Bessemer City, to the Carolinas Tin and Develop- 
ment Company, of Gaffney, S. C. Early in 1904 this property was again sold to the present 
owners, the Carolina Tin Company, of Charlottesville, Va. In June, 1904, prospecting 
was undertaken by agents of the American Sheet and Tin Plate Company, who obtained 
options on about 5,000 acres for a sum reported to have been very large. Their attention 
was directed chiefly to Chestnut Ridge, nbrtheast of Kings Mountain, and the Faires mine, 
just southwest of the village; but their operations appear not to have been sufficiently 
thorough or extensive to prove very much, and after several weeks they forfeited their 
options. During the late summer of 1904 the Jones, Ross, and Faires mines were being 
worked and active prospecting was going on in the northern part of Gaston County and in 
Lincoln County. In the fall the Faires mine was closed. 
At the present time the Ross mine is in operation and Messrs. Carpenter and Rudisill 
are engaged in proving up their properties in the northern part of the area. 
The history thus shows that tin mining in the Carolinas has been marked by a succession 
of failures ever since the discovery of cassiterite in 1881. It is hoped, however, that some 
of the operations at present under way will open a new page in this history upon which 
success shall be written. 
GEOLOGY OF THE TIN BELT. 
The Carolina tin belt, as at present explored, extends from near Gaffney, Cherokee 
County, S. C, across parts of Cleveland and Gaston counties, N. G, to a point about 4 miles 
east of Lincolnton, Lincoln County, N. C, a distance of about 35 miles. In a general way 
it follows the Kings Mountain Range throughout that distance. 
TIN-BEARING ROCKS. 
From the -discovery of tin-bearing rocks by Fufman in 1886 until the present day cassit- 
erite has been found in situ in this region only in dikes of pegmatite. The "greisen" of 
Furmana and Pratt.'' the "feldspathic shale" of Sloan, c and the clay or kaolin in which 
the cassiterite occurs at the Ross mine are all in reality pegmatite. It is probable, also, 
that the term "feldspathic beds" of the writers before the existence of tin was known was 
applied to these pegmatite dikes. 
DISTRIBUTION. 
The position of the fin belt and the distribution and structure of the tin-bearing rocks 
are intimately connected with and dependent on the general geology of the area. In a 
preceding section (pp. 26-28) it has been shown that the country along the Kings Mountain 
Range is a belt of ancient metamorphic rocks folded into an anticline, invaded later by 
igneous rocks such as granite, pegmatite, and diabase, and then greatly eroded. It has 
also been shown that the pronounced structure of the metamorphic rocks exerted a marked 
influence on the distribution and structure of these later intrusives. The result of this 
influence has been that the invading rocks occur as sheet or dike-like bodies, whose upturned 
« Trans. N. Y. Acad. Sci., vol. 8, 1888-89, p. 137. 
& Mineral Resources U. S. for 1903, U. S. Geol. Survey, 1904 p. 340, or p. 10 of the extract entitled " The 
Production of Tin." 
c The State, Columbia, S. C, August 22, 1904, p. 2. 
