94 GOLD AND TIN DEPOSITS OF SOUTHERN APPALACHIANS. 
the mass that can be considered ore has an average width of 35 feet; it has been opened 
along the strike for 300 feet and may extend farther to the northeast. To the southwest 
it reaches practically {<> the diabase dike, but not beyond it, so far as present explorations 
have shown. As mined across this width the ore will average about $2 per ton. A richer 
streak occurs not far from the foot wall; it is usually green in color and is more siliceous 
than most of the ore, a fracture face across the foliation showing small siliceous lenses 
enmeshed in the sericite matrix. In this rich streak, about 25 feet northeast of the dike on 
the 113-foot level, a bunch of $35 ore was found. The values gradually decrease toward 
both foot and hanging walls. While the change from pay ore to unprofitable rock is not 
sharp and distinct, it is fairly abrupt, and there is little difficulty in recognizing the approxi- 
mate line where pay values cease. The size and richness of the ore body appear to be 
holding out well with depth, and if the difficulties experienced in breaking and holding the 
ground can be overcome and the values can be successfully recovered by amalgamation, as 
seems thus far to have been the case, there is reason to expect that the future of this little 
mine should be bright. But developments are not yet sufficiently extensive to warrant 
any very far-reaching prognostications. 
Apparently the ore-bearing solutions which produced this deposit were intimately 
related to the quart z-monzonite porphyry and closely followed the intrusion of that rock. 
Another peculiarity of this deposit which distinguishes it from those already described is 
that the gold occurs principally native, the pyrite carrying very little value. While this 
deposit can be regarded only as a replacement of the schist, in a way it approaches rather 
closely to the group which have been formed by the filling of fissures, and with the Ferguson 
mine, described on pages 96-99, constitutes a close bond between the replacement deposits 
and the vein deposits. 
KINGS MOUNTAIN MINE. 
This celebrated mine, first known as the Briggs« mine, and more recently as the Catawba b 
mine, is situated in Gaston County, N. C, near the western foot of Kings Mountain and 
about 2 miles south of Kings Mountain station. It has not been in operation for a number 
of years and was filled with water and inaccessible when visited by the writer. The follow- 
ing description is based mainly on the observations of others. 
The mine was discovered in 1834 c and was successfully worked for several years by the 
discoverer, Mr. Briggs.d Later Commodore Stockton, who seems to have been a moving 
spirit in the gold-mining industry of this region, operated the mine for a number of years. 
Work was necessarily stopped during the war, but two or three years after its close a 20- 
stamp mill of the California type was built, c It is worthy of note that this was practically 
the first adaptation of western practice to the ores of the East./ Work continued at 
intervals up to 1895, since 1 which time nothing has been done. It is said that the property 
is now involved in litigation among persons in Richmond, Va. 
As is the case with nearly all the southern mines, no actual records of production have 
been kept. Kerr in 18750 stated that the production had been over a million, while Pro- 
fessor Hanna, who has been for many }^ears in charge of the United States assay office at - 
Charlotte, N. C, and who is probably best able to judge of the output of the Carolina mines, 
estimates the production of the Kings Mountain mine at $750,000 to $900,000.^ 
The amount of development can only be inferred from the incomplete descriptions of 
former writers. There are at least six shafts on the property. The two principal ones are] 
the Holliday shaft, 330 feet deep, and the Rock or pump shaft, about 120 feet to the south- 
west, also 330 feet deep. All the shafts are vertical and are sunk in the hanging wall of 
the deposit. The main workings center about the Rock shaft. Crosscuts to the vein and 
a Lieber, op. cit., vol. 1, p. 92. 
t> Kerr and Hanna, Rept. North Carolina Geol. Survey, vol. 2, 1888, p. 304. 
c Nitze and Hanna, Bull. North Carolina Geol. Survey No. 3, 18%, p. 147. 
d Lieber, op. cit., voir 1, p. 92. 
e Kerr, W. C, Rept. Geol. Survey North Carolina, vol. 1, 1875, p. 280. 
/Cf. Nitze and Wilkens, Bull. North Carolina Geol. Survey No. 10, 1897, p. 35. 
s Loc. cit. 
h Nitze and Hanna, Bull. North Carolina Geol. Survey No. 3, 1896, p. 147. Becker, G. F., Gold fields 
of the Southern Appalachians: Sixteenth Ann. Rept. U. S. Geol. Survey, pt. 3, 1895, p. 309. 
