Isaac Tyson's Line Pit Chrome Mine
Location: Rock Springs, on Mason-Dixon line.
Newspaper Clippings
Oxford Press
28th October 1874
ACCIDENT AT THE CHROME WORKS – A correspondent informs us of an accident at the Tyson Mining Company’s works, near Rock Springs, Cecil county, Md., on Friday last. He says: A scaffold pole in the lower level, where the water, rock, and ore are raised to a platform by windlass power, and from whence it is raised to the surface, gave way, the timbers falling some 30 feet upon four miners, breaking the leg and crushing the foot of Andrew Weaver, of Fulton township, Lancaster County. One of the men carried the wounded man on his back up a ladder to the platform, where Capt. Paul (the manager of the gangs) took him and put him in the ore barrel at the other end of the platform and with one foot in the barrel and his arms around the wounded and the rope, they were thence hoisted by horse power up the shaft some 200 feet to the surface of mother earth. The wounded man was conveyed to his home where a physician dressed his wounds. Well done, noble Captain, though a stranger among us, thou hast made many friends by this one brave and humane act to thy fellow man. K.
Oxford Press
28th October 1874
The accident at the chrome works near Rock Springs, on the 23rd, of which a correspondent kindly sends us an account, happened at what is called the Line pit. The accident occurred to the injured man over 200 feet under the surface of the earth, in Maryland, but when he was brought up he landed in Pennsylvania, as the mouth of the pit is in this State.
The Lowe Pit was originally opened by Andrew Lowe and Benjamin Gibson, who obtained a large quantity of chrome. The Maryland part was acquired by the Tysons, who were probably the ones to open the Line pit. The ore in the Line pit was massive and ran over 50% chromic oxide. It was mined by a shaft that was sunk to a vertical depth of about 92 feet; a drift ran south from the shaft for 75 feet, and another shaft was sunk from the drift on a 75° grade for 106 feet. In 1917 the Chgrome Mining Co. acquired the mineral rights on the property, unwatered the shaft, sank 40 feet below the old level, and struck a lens of massive ore about 10 feet long by 4 feet wide that averages 50% chromic oxide. There is also estimated to be several thousand tons of chrome sand available in the stream south of the Line pit. (Knopf, 1922) |