Mines, Minerals and Men Sites of New Jersey
Mines, Metal and Men
A Skylands Trail Of Historical Sites Tells A Remarkable Story About Industry and Invention.
Imagine a hundred years from today. How will people remember the last part of this century in Northern New Jersey? Will our great grandchildren have a sense of our human reality? Will they understand the revolution of the personal computer, the experience of driving an automobile on an interstate or reading a magazine on paper? Will they comprehend our fears and disappointments? Will our descendants know what really "turned us on"? Will they find romance in the stories of their ancestors?
It is magical to understand another time; to reveal (for yourself, not out a book) the mysteries of the past. It is the ultimate "virtual reality" to feel the things that have happened right where you're standing- especially if they're important things. You can't touch the experience with any video, documentary or Disneyland. Exploring the past, rather than reading about it, is enchanting. And by making personal discoveries about our heritage we find more meaning in what we encounter day to day.
There is a thread of heritage and industry that began in the New Jersey highlands centuries ago, before America officially started. If you know about it, a ride on the interstate becomes a little more interesting as you approach the hills on the horizon, passing through corridors cut through the earth. And turning off onto a county highway becomes a tour through some of the richest history in America when you really know where you are.
From pre-Revolutionary times through the 1980's, the ore and minerals contained in our corner of the planet have shaped our history. Mining is the basis for a major contribution from Northwest New Jersey to modern American society. From the first established settlements in the Musconetcong River Valley the iron working communities were the most durable. Forges and foundries were the economic engines of the time, places that saw remarkable events.
Iron is only a part of the story that is told in the wealth of sites you can visit here in the Skylands. You can follow a trail of key places in the development of the Industrial Revolution- and modern American society. Out of the first established settlements in the Skylands- invariably ironworking communities- grew a network between the mines, blast furnaces, refining areas and ironworks that was by the 1840's-1860's a marvel of the times. This period, the "dead period" between the Revolution and Civil War is one of the most under-rated in our history. Before these years there were no railroads, no health care, no telecommunications, no real cohesiveness beyond a political doctrine. There wasn't even a standard currency- each bank printed its own money. Things that went on during that period right here in the Skylands had a lot to do with how we live today.
The folks that run these sites- Historic Speedwell, Oxford Furnace/ Shippen Manor, Waterloo Village, Sterling Hill Mine and the Hunterdon Historical Museum- have begun to work together to create a trail of industrial history that spans hundreds of years, and a good chunk of our Skylands Region. You could make the trip from Morristown to Stanhope to Oxford to Ogdensburg in a day, but each property merits more than just a cursory look. As Dick Hauck of Sterling Mine explains: "It's an interesting situation. I've seen pictures of the pyramids since I was able to walk. I've seen pictures of the Parthenon all my life in history books. But until you walk up the Acropolis and actually enter the Parthenon there is a dimension that you can never describe. And walking on any of these properties, they are not a facade, not something that has been created by some illusionist. These are real places where real people spent their lives creating industry, commerce and changing the course of history. Because it was the mining and the metal industries in Northern New Jersey that created the development of this country in the earlier stages. The mining industry spans from pre-Revolutionary War, ending only eight years ago. So you're looking at a huge span of Americana. It's the multiple dimensions of these properties that can excite the senses.
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| Fluorescent caverns thrill visitors on the underground tour of Sterling Mine in Ogdensburg |
All during the early 1800's, the mining, smelting and forging of iron was equally important in hundreds of locations throughout Northwest New Jersey. The unique ore deposits of Sussex County's Sterling Hill in Ogdensburg and Mine Hill (Franklin) provided an era of analysis and exploitation which eventually aided in the development of a suitable smelting process and utilization of the unique zinc ore. The resources from these mines found their way to hundreds of 20th century every day products- from automobiles and radios to pharmaceuticals and printing ink- until the Sterling Mine closed in 1986. When the mines were electrified around the turn of the century, sparks emitted from some of the equipment emitted ultraviolet light, revealing the spectacular fluorescent quality of minerals in the surrounding cavern. The sites are geological record holders: With the over 70 renowned fluorescent minerals, they are host to more than 330 minerals and are the type localities for 67 species, about half of which are found nowhere else.
Today the property at Sterling Hill has been converted into a mining museum which includes over 30 acres of indoor & outdoor displays and historical buildings. It features an exciting underground mine tour where you can see the shafts from which miners brought ore from thousands of feet underground. After walking into the mine entrance, feeling the hardness of the underground surround, and continuing on a fascinating journey through the tunnels, visitors are constantly amazed when they enter a spectacular cavern lit by fluorescent minerals.
And kids never fail to learn something while they embark on a unique and fascinating journey into the earth. The walk inside the mountain passes dozens of exhibits illustrating mining practices, geology and mineralogy. Passing from chamber to chamber inhabited by real-life models, peeking into shafts diving deep into the old mine, feeling the chilly dampness of the underground, visitors gain a real sense of "what it was like". The site offers the precise amount of drama and realism to leave a lasting impression, one that is educational and truly entertaining.
Above ground Sterling Hill features a museum filled with antique mining equipment, mining artifacts, rare mineral specimens and gift shop with a collection of world wide minerals. The Haucks have completed a series of "mining fields" stocked an assortment of minerals from which young prospectors are challenged to supply their boxes with various types.
Sterling Hill Mine
The Essence of Flourescence
by Mary Jasch, www.dig-itmag.com
Gem lovers, adventurers, history buffs take note! A labyrinth of marbleized tunnels gilded by a multi-color glow of fluorescent minerals below the earth awaits at Sterling Hill Mining Museum.
For years I heard of the gems once found in the mines of the Skylands Region: rubies, sapphires, garnet. The mines were an image of the past, ancestral, remote, almost exotic, and filled with gorgeous crystals of pink rhodonite, the rainbow colors of willemite, blood-red garnet and other precious beauties. They were a destination to see and maybe find, if I were lucky, a treasure all my own. Then a few weeks ago, I heeded the call of the mines. I was not disappointed.
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| The conveyor belt and ore tanks of the old mill looms above the Mine Run Collecting Dump and turn-of-the-century warehouse. It is now the Concession Building that houses the snack bar and gift shop. Photo by Mary Jasch. |
As I turned onto Route 517 in Sussex County, I spotted the old brick buildings and remains of a mining mill tucked against the hillside overlooking the country town of Ogdensburg. Small cottages, once lived in by miners and their families, cluster near the old general store. Larger houses, just across the street from the mine, were occupied by the bosses so they didn't have to walk so far.
In the northwest town of Ogdensburg, Sterling Hill Mine is home to a world famous collection of minerals and fluorescent rocks. This geological gem contains over 340 mineral species, the largest combination anywhere, and over 70 of them fluoresce, the most in any spot on earth. The district is known as "The Fluorescent Capital of the World." Additionally, 35 of the minerals are rare, and are found nowhere else in the world. Sterling Hill Mine, and its sister mine in Franklin, have the richest deposit of zinc ore in the world, where it is mined as oxides and silicates without a sulfur component like in other mines. These phenomena have earned Sterling Hill Mine two titles of distinction: National Historic Site and a Mines, Metal and Men Site.
Ogdensberg was once a company town owned by the New Jersey Zinc Company. The mine closed in 1986, and in 1987 Dick Hauck and his brother Bob bought it at a tax sale. Two years later they turned it over to a non-profit, educational foundation, The Sterling Hill Mining Museum, dedicated to the preservation of the mine and its historical significance. Last year, over 33,000 people came to see the splendor of the mine's natural fluorescence, and the awesomeness of the tunnels made by man.
Sterling Hill Mine is a place where miners once blasted walls with black powder looking for zinc-filled ore, and others drilled ten-foot core samples trying to find the richest source. It's a place where workers wore self-rescuers. A place where muckers, drillers, and timbermen dug and blasted their own tunnels, and men carried dynamite on their backs - they "humped powder".
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| Sheave wheels rest in front of the mine's original air shaft in the side of the mountain. Photo by Mary Jasch. |
Today, you enter the mine through a ten-foot wide, horizontal tunnel called the "adit". Side tunnels shooting off the adit were added by the Foundation for ease in touring, but usually an adit went directly to a vertical tunnel, or "shaft" where men and materials were transported. The floors, walls and ceilings are Franklin marble, marbleized limestone, metamorphosed since its deposition in Pre-Cambrian times over 1.1 billion years ago.
As you walk further into the adit the huge wooden "air doors", once closed to keep the bad air out as part of the mine's air circulation system, are now swung wide. There are steel "square sets", sets of three steel beams used now instead of timber, fitted tight against the walls and ceiling to provide support after the tunnel was blasted and the ore cleared out. It's easy to imagine the miners stopping in the lamp room to pick up their lamps and "self-rescuers", small canisters that converted carbon monoxide to carbon dioxide, that lasted fifteen minutes.
Directly ahead is a monstrous, slanted gap in the marble. It's the main shaft that rises 150 feet, and drops nearly 2,000 feet down into the earth. The 53° angled shaft parallels the tilt of the orebody, a deposit that contains a large amount of zinc, that follows the dip of the mountain. You stand under the "footwall", or the underside, of the orebody that extends the length of the hillside the adit's dug into. The shaft has five compartments, four with roller-coaster-like tracks, and one for cables, pipes, and ladders. Two sets of tracks bring skips filled with ore up out of the mine and two sets carry cages that hold 40 men and materials. The shaft connects 18 levels that are approximately 100 vertical feet apart.
Sterling Hill Mining Museum received the Carnegie Mineralogical Award, a citation of international renown recognizing outstanding contributions in mineralogical preservation, conservation and education. The prize, established in 1987 by the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and underwritten annually by the Hillman Foundation, consists of a bronze medallion, a certificate of recognition, and a $2,500 cash prize.
Walk past the end of the adit on a steel bridge over the "orepass", an angled pit that once ended at a rock crusher, but is now filled with water. Every level of the mine is connected to it. The original mine ends here as you walk through more adits and "stopes", rooms within the orebody itself where the ore was extracted. These were dug more recently by the Sterling Hill Mine Foundation.
"Drifts" are tunnels that give access to the orebody. One marble wall shows a "drift round", a series of holes drilled into a tunnel wall that are ready to be filled with explosives for blasting. Some of the men lit fuses on sticks of dynamite with the lights on the front of their hats. You had three minutes to find safety. From the blast, the rock exploded and filled the stope with broken ore of all sizes.
In the stope, in the black willemite
zone, the "slusher" machine scrapes the fallen ore into a 4-foot diameter shaft
sunk into the floor. The driver sits behind a screen, like a medieval
windshield, made of steel bars and heavy chain to protect his face from getting
thrashed by machinery cables that might break and whip back. Sometimes "muckers"
worked, shoveling broken ore into cars. The shaft dumps ore into a car on the
level below, then the car dumps the ore into the orepass. A "grizzly", or huge
mesh-like screen in the orepass, catches the larger rocks that might clog the
crushers. A man stood by, whose job was to beat these rocks with a sledge-hammer
until they fit through the grizzly. The rock flows to a giant crusher machine,
over a thousand feet below ground. The crushed ore drops to lower levels into
skips that are hoisted to the surface, then on to the mill. In the mine, gravity
moves most everything between levels. The emptied stope gets back-filled with
waste-rock and a cement cap to prevent cave-ins. There are "raises" at each end
of the stope skinny shafts that connect levels and allow air circulation.
A fault cracks through the walls of
the Rainbow Tunnel. Its surfaces gleam with flowstone. In other spots, the fault
is highly polished forming a "slick and slide" from just the right amount of
pressure over time. The Rainbow Room's walls and ceiling fluoresce with what the
Sterling Hill Mine is famous for - the red of calcite in the marbleized
limestone and the bright green of willemite, used to track the orebody.
The way to the Thomas S. Warren Museum of Fluorescence is through one of the original entrances to the mine that was buried for 100 years. The Haucks saw concrete foundations sticking above the earth and began digging. "It was sort of like digging out King Tut's tomb, it got bigger and bigger, " describes Bob Hauck, treasurer and facilitator of the Foundation. The early, extensive underground mine complex of Sterling Hill was started from 1830 to 1850, then in 1915 the company built an eight-story mill above ground for processing the zinc ore and housing the locker room where the miners showered and changed. It was torn down in the 1960s. The below-ground level is all that remains of the mill, and it's now the Geo Tech Center, with the Museum of Fluorescence as part of it. And all that glitters is not gold it's fluorite, willemite, and calcite too.
"The Thomas S. Warren Museum of Fluorescence is the greatest fluorescent center on earth," explains Ron Mishkin, a tour guide and one of the last remaining miners. Rocks were brought in from all over the world and some are from the mine. Fluorescent rocks were not important to the NJ Zinc Company, so they were not mined for their fluorescence. "It's the mecca of fluorescence," adds Hauck.
When mysteries remain in nature, people reflect. Theories abound why the Sterling Hill and Franklin Mines have the only zinc veins with oxides and silicates and no sulfur just franklinite, willemite, and zincite. "In order to get three minerals together and mine 33 million tons of them that haven't been mined anywhere else, it's a phenomenon," says Mishkin. "Something had to happen to cause the sulfur to go away to leave silicates and oxygen." One theory is that an undersea "smoker" spewed hot water up and deposited minerals heavy in iron, manganese and zinc onto the ocean floor in layers. During a billion years, mountain building, glaciation, fracturing and erosion affected the form of the mineral deposits into metamorphic rock. Glaciers melted and caused oxidation and water poured through the soft limestone to the ore deposit, causing a chemical reaction that changed the minerals. Over ten years worth of zinc ore is left in the mine, but the cost of removal exceeds its value. Most of the ore left is in the upper levels. The miners worked from bottom up.
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There is much to see and do at the Sterling Hill Mine. Visit the museum, once the miners' locker room, with artifacts from mining days, baskets and clothes hung high to dry, boulders, gems, fossils, machinery, and an antique safe that weighs 5 tons that houses native gold from everywhere. Mine your own treasures of fluorescent minerals, crystals, and other rare specimens in the "dump". Dig through the section with rocks from all over the globe. They were brought up from the mine before it flooded when the mine closed.
Yes, the mine and museum were everything I had envisioned. You can experience the sense of men from not so long ago, whose job was to mine metals from the earth, while exposing the mineralogical richness and beauty and geological mysteries of the Skylands. Their mystique survives.
Visit the museum, once the miners' locker room, with artifacts from mining days, including, baskets and clothes hung high to dry
This article first appeared in Skylands Visitor Magazine, www.njskylands.com.
Contact Information
- Telephone 973-209-7212
- FAX 973-209-8505
- Postal address
- 30 Plant Street, Ogdensburg, NJ 07439
- Electronic mail
- Send email to shmm@ptd.net for general information.
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tacco@ptd.net with questions or comments about this web site.
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