Kin Mori Mine, Dawsonville, Dawson County, Georgia, USAi

Regional Level Types
Kin Mori Mine	Mine
Dawsonville	Town
Dawson County	County
Georgia	State
USA	Country

In 1881, Charles W. Short, of Cincinnati, Ohio, and associates purchased between 700 and 800 acres of land, about four miles south of Dawsonville, and organized the Kin Mori Gold Mining Company. The officers of this company were· Charles W. Short, President and Treasurer, Charles L. Mitchell, Secretary, and Messrs. Anderson & Hobbs, of Cincinnati, Engineers. The Kin Mori property, besides some adjacent land, included lots 861, 862, 908, 909, 91O, 911, 926, 927, 928, 929, 976, 977, 978 and 979· These are all forty acre lots, and lie in the 4th district, 1st section.

The first work undertaken, looking towards the operation of this mineral property, was the construction of a ditch, for conveying water from Nimble Will creek, in Lumpkin county, to the mine. This ditch, known as the "Nimble Will Ditch," was constructed, and water reached the property, in the early part of 188 3· The ditch was thirty-three miles long; and, when completed, it had cost $40,000. It was designed for a capacity of 1,000 miner's inches (Georgia standard) of water, equal to a volume of twenty-five cubic feet per second. On an average, during the year, the creek furnished about 600 miner's inches.

Having obtained water, hydraulic mining was started immediately. The first objective point was Bean branch. This was worked fifty feet on either side, by means of a No. 15 hydraulic giant, with a water-pressure of 175 feet. From Bean branch, they transferred their operations to the placer on the Etowah river bottoms, just above Hugh's Shoals, from which, tradition says, Indians formerly took considerable quantities of gold. This was the most difficult task to which they set themselves, both fall and dumping ground being absent. To surmount the natural difficulties, they resorted to a hydraulic gravel-elevator. This was operated under a water-head of 300 feet; and it carried, to a height of forty feet, all the water discharged from a No. 8 hydraulic giant, under equal pressure, together with all the clay, sand and gravel moved. The Hugh's Shoal placer was mined, in the latter part of 1883, continuously, for about one year.

During the winter of 1884 and 1885, a thirty-stamp mill, driven by a turbine wheel, was erected on Harris branch. Following the erection of this mill, hydraulic ore mining was instituted, and the property was thus operated, up to the cessation of work, by this company. By means of hydraulic giants, they cut down, as far as possible, the so-called Quarles belt, which consists of innumerable small quartz stringers and lenses in schists. The water from the giants carried the displaced material, through a long line of sluice-boxes, to the mill, situated some distance below the workings. In the mill, the coarse and harder portions were retained in a bin, and were fed to the batteries by hand, the mud and silt being carried through into Harris branch. In this way, a large percentage of the gold obtained was taken from the riffle sluice-boxes. The Quarles belt was thus mined, until the early part of 1887. During the period of operation on this section, some 300,000 cubic yards of earth was removed. The estimated expense of cutting down the ore-body was a fraction of one cent per cubic yard, and of milling the ore, about 50 cents per ton.

Operations of a proportionate nature were continued, until early in the year 1888, when they were postponed indefinitely. In 1883, Mr. D. Lee Wardroper was appointed superintendent, and remained in that position, until the mine closed.

The work of the Ohio people points to but one conclusion, viz., that the veins and saprolite of this body of land, worked by them, is not profitable, as free-milling material. Whether or not the concentrates of the ore contain much gold is not known, since no attempts were made to save them. It is very probable, however, that a large percentage of the gold was carried away in the tailings. Workers of similar material have found such to be the case. A mill will, in the case of some saprolites, save only about one-fourth of its assay value. It has been found, that much of the gold is so rusty, that the friction in the batteries is not sufficient to remove the rust, and the amalgamation plates cannot catch such gold. This rust must be removed by friction in amalgamation pans, or by some chemical means.

There is one vein on the property, which, notwithstanding the misfortunes of the Kin Mori Company, will preserve this area from complete condemnation. This is known as "The Big Sulphuret Vein." It has been prospected by Messrs. Hall Brothers, Mining Engineers of Atlanta, from a point, a short distance northwest of the stamp-mill, to the banks of the Etowah river, a total distance of over twelve hundred yards. Surface shafts have been made, at various points along the vein, and one tunnel, not far from the mill, has been run into the vein. The same gentlemen have also made a survey of the vein, the results of which have been kindly loaned to the writer. The profile of the vein shows the elevations and the locations of the tunnel and pits, and the width of the vein, at the various cuts. The average thickness of this vein is about six feet. It strikes N. 60° E., and dips sharply to the southeast. All the cuts show a compact quartz vein, containing more or less pyrite. In the cut at Harris branch, the pyrite is extensive and unoxidized. At tunnel "No. 7," the character of the ore-body is somewhat changed; the previous solid body here spreads out into stringers, with intervening schists, but still strongly sulphide in character. Panning from the ore-body, at this tunnel, failed to give a trace of gold; yet the sample taken by me, from the vein, at this point, yielded high assay results. The sample, assayed, represents an average ore, from the full thickness of the vein; and the marked difference, between this and the Crandall assay, must be accounted for, by the presence of minute particles of free gold.

The Kin Mori (Harris Branch) property, about 4 miles south of Dawsonville, comprises lots 861, 862, 908, 909, 910, 911, 926, 927, 928, 929, 976, 977, 978, and 979, all in the 4th district. It is owned by J. C. Short and his brother, of Gainesville, Ga. Hydraulic mining was attempted for a period of 5 years, from 1883 to 1888, but the venture was unsuccessful. When visited in 1935, the property had been idle for many years and the pits were slumped and overgrown; the exposures were sufficiently good, however, to yield some information. No records of the past production are available.

Most of the work at this property was done by hydraulic methods. Three large pits and several smaller ones were opened. The largest, on what is known as the Quarles zone, is about 1,200 feet long, 100 to 200 feet wide, and 50 to 100 feet deep. An adit 137 feet long was the only accessible underground opening, although other underground work has been done.

The country rock throughout the area is saprolitic; no unaltered rock was seen. Most of the saprolite is of the kind formed by the weathering of mica schist; it is reddish or grayish and contains many residual flakes of bronzy mica; generally less than one quarter of an inch but rarely as much as half an inch in diameter. The mica schist is all garnetiferous. The strike of the foliation is persistently about N. 45° E., and the dip is 45° to 65° SE. Layers of yellow saprolite, typical of weathered amphibole gneiss, cross the property near the northern and southern borders of the mapped area. The layer at the south, mapped as light colored amphibole gneiss, is more siliceous than that to the north. The few observed contacts of light-colored amphibole gneiss and mica schist suggest that the northern, or lower, contact is more sharply defined than the southern, along which narrow layers of the two rocks alternate in a zone about 10 to 20 feet wide. One thin layer of ferruginous micaceous quartzite has been mapped.

The lodes consist of numerous layers and stringers of quartz, few of them over 3 inches thick. Those in the mica schist are usually parallel to the foliation, though some of the stringers cut across it. As many as 28 layers of quartz, each about an inch or less in thickness; were counted in a width of 5 feet of the mica schist near its northern contact with the amphibole gneiss. In the Quarles cut, 68 quartz stringers, none more than 3 inches thick and most of them less than 1 inch thick, were counted within a width of 230 feet. Five chip samples taken from the Quarles cut and those farther north all contained traces of gold, but none assayed more than 0.01 ounce per ton.

The Sulphuret lode is in mica schist near the lower or northern boundary of the southern band of amphibole gneiss. Comparatively little work has been done on this lode, but it appears to contain larger quartz bodies than the Quarles and other lodes. The Sulphuret lode contains up to 10 or 15 feet of quartz. It is well exposed in an adit driven N. 46° W. from near the southeastern corner of the mapped area, to intersect the lode, which it entered 124.5 feet and left 135 feet from the portal. In the adit about half of the lode consists of sericitized schist, the remainder being quartz, part of which is dark bluish-gray and spotted and banded with sulfides, mainly pyrite and arsenopyrite. Although the country rock around the Sulphuret lode is altered to saprolite, fragments of hard bluish-gray quartz in the outcrop of the lode contain unaltered pyrite and arsenopyrite.