Kirk Mine

Location: West Nottingham, north of West Ridge Road, Nottingham County Park. The exact location of this mine is unclear.


A pit about 45 feet deep south of Black Run and about 2½ mile southwest of Nottingham, owned by Edward Kirk, of Oxford, PA., was being unwatered by horsepower in 1918. The ore on the old dumps was both massive and disseminated. (Knopf, 1922)


Chromite and other mineral deposits in serpentine rocks of the piedmont upland Maryland, Pennsylvania and Delaware, by N.C. Pearre and A.V. Heyl, Geological Survey Bulletin 1082-K (1960), discussion (abridged) of the Kirk mine is as follows:

An old shaft 65 or 75 feet deep, probably inclined southward, was cleaned and retimbered by the National Minerals Co. in 1918, and again in 1941 by J. A. Wilson, who removed about 300 tons of waste from it. Another shaft is about 20 feet southwest of the first one, and a drift is reported to extend southeasterly from this shaft. Some ore - no more than a few tons - may have been mined in 1918 and sold along with ore from the Scott mine dumps in a shipment that averaged 36 percent Cr2O3. In 1941 some ore was mined or sorted from the dump, but the grade was too low to warrant continued work.