SEBASTIAN COUNTY, 215 
steam heated drying shed and burned in the ordinary open kiln. The 
fuel used was a mixture of coal and wood. 
In drying these bricks part with their water very slowly, and it 
usually requires about six days to dry them sufficiently to be put in 
the kiln. The time allowed for burning is from ten to twelve days. 
When burned hard the outside bricks are dark brown and the inside 
bricks dark blue. In the kiln used at Fort Smith the outside bricks 
were bright red. 
Clays formed by the disintegration of these shales shrink consid- 
erably in drying and burning. The bricks made at Fort Smith 
shrink about lh inches in the length of the brick (9 J inches), and the 
average settling of a kiln 36 bricks high is about 2 feet. 
In setting the kiln it is necessary to set the rows close to one another 
in order to provide for the widening of the spaces between the rows 
of bricks due to the shrinkage. 
There are at present three brick plants in Sebastian County. Two 
of these are in Fort Smith and the other at Mansfield. 
The Choctaw Brick and Gas Company.— A. plant was established in 
1901 at Mansfield, in the southeastern part of the county, by the 
Choctaw Brick and Gas Company. Common building bricks are 
made from Carboniferous shale. The shale is pugged and molded in 
the Berg machine. The bricks are dried in sheds and nine to ten 
days are required to dry them sufficiently to place in the kiln. They 
are burned in up-draft and down-draft kilns, which hold from 50,000 
to 250,000 bricks each. Five kilns are in use. The kilns are arranged 
to use coal and natural gas for burning, and about one-half ton of 
coal is consumed for each 1,000 bricks. The length of time for burn- 
ing a kiln is about fifteen days. The shrinkage of the clay is about 
one-sixteenth. The output of the plant is 20,000 a day. 
Plants at Fort Smith. — The two plants located at Fort Smith are 
the Fort Smith Paving Brick and Fire Clay Company, Louis Ismay 
& Brother, lessees, and a plant operated by John D. Carbaugh. 
Detailed information concerning these plants was not obtained. 
The material used in the manufacture of the ordinary red building 
brick at Fort Smith occupies a district west of the city that includes 
the greater portions of sees. 9 and 16, the whole of fractional secs.^ 
8 and 17, and the northwestern portion of sec. 20, as well as the 
SW. I sec. 4, all in T. 8 N., R. 32 W. The SW. i SE. \ sec. 34, 
T. 9 N., R. 32 W., also contains a red earthy clay from which bricks 
have been manufactured. 
This brick earth is a stiff clay which is in places mixed with so 
much sand that the beds have the appearance of homogeneous 
deposits of sandy clay. It is, however, very irregular in its texture 1 , 
varying within short distances from stiff clay to loose sand. Both 
sand and clay are of a red color, dark red when wet and pale yel- 
