Clay Creek Mine (Harrison W. Harp Mine), Barnesville, Lamar County, Georgia, USAi

Regional Level Types
Clay Creek Mine (Harrison W. Harp Mine)	Mine
Barnesville	Town
Lamar County	County
Georgia	State
USA	Country

The Clay Cheek mine is on the C. B. Harrell farm near the southern boundary of Lamar County. It is 4.5 airline miles S. 9° E. of Barnesville. The mine workings are in a cornfield a few hundred feet east of the Harrell house. The deposit was worked under lease by Harrison W. Harp, of Thomaston, from November 1943 to July 1944. During November 1943 Harp dug a pit in a field where mica books had been turned up by plowing, and he later expanded this opening into a nearly vertical slotlike cut 25 ft long and 6 ft wide. Water was encountered at a depth of 22 ft, and work was suspended. Clay A. Cheek, who then took over operations, excavated an open-cut 85 ft by 25 ft in plan and 20 ft deep by means of a dragline and power shovel. The older workings were obliterated in the process. A 40-ft shaft was later sunk at the northeast end of the cut, and a 9-ft pit was dug at a point 50 ft northeast of the shaft. The mine was abandoned in January 1945.

A vertical pegmatite body 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 ft thick strikes N. 38° E. in partly granitized biotite gneiss whose layering trends N. 20° E. and dips moderately east. Both pegmatite and gneiss are thoroughly weathered except where exposed in the 40-ft shaft. The pegmatite body is symmetrically zoned, with a 1- to 2-ft central quartz rib, a weathered perthite intermediate zone about 2 ft in average thickness, and a 6- to 12-in. wall zone of medium-grained quartz-feldspar pegmatite. Pockety concentrations of mica and white plagioclase occur in. the coarsely crystalline perthite and between the perthite and massive quartz. Biotite is abundant in the wall zone, and pyrite in the gneiss near the pegmatite contacts.

Most of the mica is cinnamon-brown "A" material. Books as much as 15 in. in diameter were mined, and from the flat material between the "A" reeves 3-by-5-in. and 4-by-6-in. sheets were trimmed. The mica, which is clear and free from clay stain, is of very good quality. The deposit does not appear to be exhausted, and possibilities for future mining seem good. It might best be developed by drifting from the 40-ft shaft.