Davis Pyrite Mine, Rowe, Franklin County, Massachusetts, USAi

Regional Level Types
Davis Pyrite Mine	Mine (Abandoned)
Rowe	Town
Franklin County	County
Massachusetts	State
USA	Country

"In some car loads of pyrite brought to New Haven, Connecticut, from the mines of J. M. Davis & Co, in the town of Rowe, Massachusetts, eight miles east of the Hoosac tunnel, I found some fragments of the mineral gahnite. On visiting the locality I learned that the gahnite occurred on the outer portions of a 'vein' or 'lenticular mass' of pyrite, of exceptional purity varying from seven to twenty feet in thickness. The including rock is gneiss and schist. The mine had, at the time of my first visit, reached a depth of 200 feet. The waste heaps afforded a large amount of material and some good specimens, though the hardness of the enclosing rock made it difficult to obtain the crystals unbroken. Part of them were entirely embedded in the pyrite and part seemed to have once lined cavities, most of which had since been filled in by quartz and the rest by chalcopyrite...

Besides the pyrite, which is seldom found in crystals of any size, the chalcopyrite and the quartz, the minerals associated more or less intimately with the gahnite are: thin plates of titanic iron, sometimes an inch across; steel gray rutile, occasionally in good crystals; sphalerite; garnet; calcite; a triclinic feldspar in greenish crystals; and epidote."

“The so-called Rowe serpentine enters the town from Vermont at the northeast corner and extends southwest across the town as a heavy bed, ten to twenty rods wide. A few rods northwesterly of Abbott White's house it bends a little and takes the same course as the Deerfield River to the west, forming the crest of a ridge. In the Cressy neighborhood it crosses the road and runs down to Hoosac Tunnel where it changes suddenly entirely into serpentine and steatite. At the old King place nearly one mile east of the Tunnel we find a large bed of serpentine with dolomite. It is compact, even grained and in color dark gray with traces of green on the fractured or sawed surfaces. A considerable amount has been taken out of this bed for soapstone stoves and bed-warmers. On Abbott White's farm the Massachusetts Talc Company for a number of years mined talc. The rock was carted to the company's grinding mill at Zoar which burned under peculiar circumstances a few years ago. The Foliated Talc Company was incorporated in 1905 and operates a talc mine on the old Bullard farm, a half-mile north of the old centre. The rock is carted to the grinding mill opposite the village school. Water power is supplied by a long metal flume from the pond connected with the village saw-mill, which in turn is supplied by Pelham Brook and the reservoir formerly supplying the old satinet factory.

Knowledge of the existence of pyrite containing iron and sulfur on the Brown farm east of Adams Mountain was known as early as 1840. H. J. Davis secured control and operated a mine from 1882 to 1910. Daily shipments at one time reached 150 tons; and before the mine was shut down, copper became an important byproduct. The chief mineral was a mass of almost pure, coarse-granular, shining yellow pyrite, with some chalcopyrite, blende, garnets, and galena.

About one and one-half miles west of the Davis Mine, George H. Davenport operated on a small copper vein for a few years. It was traceable for 700 feet conforming closely with the Savoy schist in which it occurs. The mine was abandoned after a few years, and the stockholders of the New England Mining Company, incorporated in 1902, have only pretty paper certificates and title to a few acres of land.”