Last Saturday my wife and I, as part of our fortieth anniversary gift, got to visit the Barton Garnet Mines in North River, NY. We did not come away materially richer but we did learn a few things and we had a good time.
To get to this rather unusual tourist attraction you make a turn off RT 28 between North River and North Creek. If that’s not specific enough then I have to apologize for the lack of well know landmarks. It is somewhere near the headwaters of the Hudson River tucked behind Gore Mountain and its attendant ski area. So you make this turn off 28 and start driving uphill. You drive uphill a lot. There are even little signs; “Keep on Going”, “You’re getting there”, “Only 1 ½ miles to go” and “You’re almost there”. Finally you reach a rather ramshackle building with a small parking lot. The building houses a store and some museum artifacts about the mines. It is also the place to pay for your ticket and start the tour.
A young lady soon announced that the next tour was leaving and everyone piled into their cars and followed the tour guide in her jeep down to the mine. After a short ride down hill we entered a huge pit cut into the mountain. The cars all park in the center of this pit and everyone gets out and gawks. Sheer rock cliffs surrounded us on three sides. The cliffs are several hundred feet high. Down in the bottom of the pit are two large ponds with a spit of rocky ground between them. The tour guide gathered her little flock near a huge highly polished slab of garnet impregnated rock and delivered her little lecture. She told of the accidental discovery of the vein of garnet about 150 years ago. She talked about the geology of the site. She talked about the history of the mine and how it progressed from a pick and shovel operation to one involving explosives and mechanical processes. Then she invited everyone to grab a little pail, shovel and strainer, or a five gallon bucket and do a little mining for the precious stones. I noticed that some folks had skipped the lecture and proceeded right on to the digging and sifting. The guide explained that people come back again and again to try to find the larger gem quality rocks.
So my wife and I went out along the edge of one of the ponds and scratched around in the dirt. Finding garnets is easy. There are millions of “bb” size pieces lying everywhere. There are also large boulders with chunks of the crystals embedded within. But getting the right rocks to produce a ring or necklace is another story indeed. People were gamely trying all around us. Some used small strainers that they filled with soil and rock, and then shook them in the water displacing the muddy bad stuff leaving the more likely good stones behind. Other folks took five gallon buckets, filled them with water and then poured them out, eroding away a sloping piece of ground. We tried both ways but obviously didn’t have the patience to keep at the job. We found a few small pieces and saved them. But when we went to have them weighed to pay the dollar a pound fee for hauling stuff out, the girl looked down and said that fractions weren’t her strong point and told us to just take our treasure for free.
Mostly I was interested in the way the mountain had been cut into. The power that people can harness to, literally, move a mountain is amazing. What is more amazing is that the first fifty or sixty feet of the pit were taken by hand tools alone. This is hard, ancient rock that was moved by picks and shovel. I have a hard time moving a few pieces of sod around the yard and can’t imagine the effort that the miners had to expend in lopping off that mountain top.
Garnet is not a particularly valuable gem as these things are measured. But it is useful, primarily as an abrasive. Tiny pieces of garnet are embedded into grinding wheels and sandpaper which can be used to smooth and finely polish just about any other material. It’s hard stuff. Since I wasn’t willing to load up a bucket of the stuff and make sandpaper for myself I left a little shorthanded. And since there weren’t any good quality jewelry type stones laying on the surface of the ground I lost out in that area as well. But I learned something, breathed some good mountain air and met some interesting people.
So I guess you could say I had a fine day.
And I hope you have one too.
2 comments:
As is always the case you both educate and entertain. This place sounded really cool. Perhaps someday I will get to travel to some of the really unusual places you have been although reading about them is much more entertaining and cost effective. Great piece Cuz
Very informative. Your writing is quite a gem. No pun intended!?
When you hear the banjo music you are getting close.
I have to wait till Sunday to have a fine day. Eh.
Post a Comment