Tri-State Mining District, USAi

Regional Level Types
Tri-State Mining District	Mining District
USA	Country

From: http://www.missourigeologists.org/EarlierGuidebooks/Guidebook1986.pdf

"The Tri-State mining district of Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma extends 160 km from east to west and 48 km from north to south with most production from Cherokee County, Kansas; Jasper and Newton Counties, Missouri, and Ottawa County, Oklahoma. Approximately 4000 mines produced 50% of the zinc and 10% of the lead used by the United States from 1850 to 1950. Ore production as of 1964 was 22,639,000 tons of zinc concentrates and 3,732,000 tons of lead concentrates from 500,000,000 tons of rock which were valued at $2,051,192,000 after smelting. Before companies such as Asarco Inc., American Metals Co., DuPont Chemical Co., Eagle-Picher Co., National Lead Co., St. Joe Lead Co., U.S. Mining, Smelting and Refining, U.S. Steel, and U.S. Zinc conducted profitable commercial mining operations in the area that became known as the Tri-State mining district, the efforts of many prospectors and ventures involving only a few miners, opened the way for lead and zinc mining that continued for 123 years.

The knowledge of how to prospect in a region that contained widespread, low-grade deposits grew with time. Many of the first prospectors were farmers who used converted farm implements as prospecting tools to search for lead ore on their own property. Some methods, commonly developed in Tri-State by experienced miners and prospectors from other mining regions, laid groundwork for modern mining exploration techniques. By the turn of the century, mechanization and large company ownership took the place of the individual or pair of prospectors with shovels, a converted plow, a windlass, or a horse-drawn hoist in the exploration for lead and zinc ores throughout the Tri-State region.

Haworth attributes miners, William Tingle and Daniel Campbell with the first lead mining operations in the area. William Tingle, who owned a farm two miles east of Joplin, Missouri, brought David Campbell to prospect on his farm in 1848. Campbell, an experienced miner from Washington County, Missouri, examined the topography and located galena close to the surface. Tingle recovered 100 pounds of galena from the spot. The new prospect grew into the mining camp of Leadville. A year later Campbell discovered galena within the city limits of Joplin. In view of David Campbell’s experience in other Missouri lead fields, John Cox showed Campbell a rock with bright edges from his farm. Campbell smelted lead from the rock to prove the importance of the find. By 1850, approximately 100 persons prospected the surrounding area of the Kansas City Bottoms, which is part of present-day Joplin (Gibson, 1972). Cox searched for additional ore by blasting, and new prospectors merely dug frantically in random places.

The Granby mining field was established concurrently with the Joplin field. In 1850, William Foster sank an exploratory shaft near the Madison Vickery home, after the discovery of lead ore during the digging of a water well. Buckley and Buehler (1906) report that prospectors found ore at the surface and also entangled in grass roots, just below the surface, to a depth of 215 feet in the Granby district. Attention to topography was a prime exploration tool here, because ore followed the sides of pre-Pennsylvanian age valleys with Pennsylvanian strata draped gently over them. Andrew McKee and Thomas Livingston prospected the Minersville area north of Joplin, later known as Oronogo, in 1851. Sphalerite and galena occurred at the site, but only the lead ore was valued at this time. Local people collected galena that occurred at the surface at Oronogo as early as 1838 and used it for shot, according to Gibson (1972). Mining companies, such as the Center Valley Mining Company, incorporated in 1897, looked for areas of float or ore picked up at the surface as indication that more could be found below the surface.

Stream beds and adjacent land in Cherokee County, Kansas, were valuable for exploration, just as in Missouri. Shoal Creek was a focus for prospecting after ore was found at the surface where the stream had cut into Mississippian strata. In the valley it was found in roots of uprooted trees, or plowed up by farmers. Prospectors, convinced that more lead ore could be found near Shoal Creek, sank exploration shafts and found large quantities of ore at 15-20 feet depth and also at Short Creek northwest of Galena.

Exploration shafts were the main tools for evaluating prospects throughout the mining district. An exploration shaft was a vertical passageway for transporting to the subsurface tools, timbers, explosives, and miners, for hauling out dirt, and for supplying air for the prospectors. The dimensions of the early shafts were approximately 1.6 m by 2 m. A map showing 290 prospecting and mining shafts along Joplin Creek accompanied G.C. Broadhead’s 1874 Report of the Missouri Geological Survey. In 1877, the Center Creek Mining Company leased 200 acres, purchased from John C. Webb, to prospectors who sank 130 shafts and produced over $5.5 million worth of lead and zinc ore in the Webb City, MO field. Fowler (1943) states that approximately 30,000 drill holes reaching depths as great as 155 m were used to randomly prospect the region. The chief hindrance to deep prospect shafts was shallow subsurface water that invariably filled the shafts at 10 m depth.

As an understanding of the relationship of country rock to ore deposits grew, prospectors sank shafts along sinkholes, ravines, and valleys formed by subsidence. Jasperoid, which frequently hosted the ores, occurred in the lowlying places, whereas limestone formed the hills. The prospectors expected to find little ore in limestone, but would sink shallow shafts through it at marginal areas to strike jasperoid and ore beneath. In contrast to this line of thinking, prospectors in Kansas east of Galena, sank shafts in the hilltops after a rich ore deposit in the Nevada shaft was established on higher ground. In Bureau of Mines Circular 7993, Brichta described a method known as shale drilling. Because ore deposits were commonly found adjacent to shale basins or slumps, rows of holes were drilled to define the contact between the Cherokee Shale and the Boone Limestone. An isopach map drawn from drill hole data, revealed where shale dipped into a slump and a paying prospect shaft might be sunk in the ore-rich shale within the collapsed strata.

Another indicator was open ground, sonamed because ore at the surface occurred either as pebble ore (individual crystals) or finely disseminated grains in secondary flint. Haworth (1904) indicates that adjacent to the open ground, stratified ore was usually present in either dolomite or jasperoid. In addition, if a prospector found voids in the wall rock containing black mud and water, he continued to seek lead ore. Galena crystals often lined the walls of these black mud-filled cavities. If the mud was light-colored, the best ore he could expect was sphalerite, which was usually discarded in the early mining years in Tri-State.

Prospecting was a serious part of developing the Tri-State mining district. Precursors to modern exploration techniques for locating ore deposits included observing and recording surface topography, understanding the relationship of the desirable ores to types of host rocks, and thousands of drill holes and prospect shafts. Events that contributed to the prospecting boom in the Tri-State region were the extension of the St. Louis-San Francisco Railway through southwest Missouri and into eastern Kansas, and establishment of a lead smelter in eastern Kansas. These conveniences made mining more cost effective. In contrast to the early years when farmers became prospectors and used converted farm gear, turn-of-the century prospecting and mining in the Tri-State mining district became more mechanized, methodical, and effective. Large companies prospected with modern equipment and methods to sink as many shafts in the ground as possible in search of lead ore and the prosperity it brought."