Wood Mine


Newspaper Clippings

Village Record 1st July 1851

Pennsylvania Chrome Mines – On the Octoraro creek, which separates Chester and Lancaster counties, there is Wood’s chrome mine, about nine miles from Nottingham, which is 170 feet deep, 200 feet long, and about 40 feet broad. This is considered to be the largest chrome mine in the world; and the researchers and analysis of several chemists, both of this country and Europe, have ascertained it yields the best ore, being nearly pure bi-chromate of iron, 93 per cent. of which is oxide of chrome. The mine has been worked about 15 years, with a brief interruption. The site of the mine is represented as offering – what, indeed the whole region has long been – a rich field of interest to mineralogists. It abounds in magnesian and chrome minerals, yielding also beautiful specimens of emerald, nickel, pennine, kammerite, marmolite etc. The magnesian ore is found in veins in serpentine, some of which have been followed into the side of the hill nearly 100 yards.

Village Record 1st January 1861

The Chrome Banks of Chester County - A correspondent of the West Chester Jeffersonian, writing from Hopewell Borough, thus describes the Chrome Works in that vicinity:- Some six miles southwest of this place lie the famous chrome mines, familiarly known as “Wood’s Chrome Banks.” They and a tract of land are owned by a Mr. Tyson, of Baltimore Md., properly styled the “Chrome King.” To these quarries or mines we paid a visit during the last season, when there were upwards of 70 hands employed in and about the mines, independent of those engaged in hauling the chrome to market. There are two shafts sunk, from which the ore or mineral is taken. They have descended to the amazing depth of three hundred feet. The mouths of the shafts have nothing dissimilar in their appearance to that of an ordinary well, probably a little wider. They descend perpendicularly some 75 feet, then strike off in an oblique direction for a distance, then perpendicularly again, and so on to the bottom of the pits, the men being, as we are told, some fifty yards further south at the bottom than at the entrance. The chrome is drawn up by mule power. Two buckets about the size of a flour barrel are attached to a rope at each end. While one is being emptied the other is being filled. Some 300 yards distant is the mill for grinding the chrome preparatory to barreling it. Here they have a water-power excelled by few, having the advantage of all the water of “Octoraro Creek” if needed. From here there is a shaft runs (connected by machinery to the mill) to the mines, and there attached to pumps for the purpose of pumping the water from the pits. The hands employed are principally Irish, and are a rough, hardy looking set of fellows. The wages are good – considerably higher than farm hands receive. ...

Scientific American 26th January 1861

A correspondent of the West Chester Jeffersonian, writing from Hopewell Borough, thus describes the Chrome Works in that vicinity:- Some six miles southwest of this place lie the famous chrome mines, familiarly known as “Wood’s Chrome Banks.” They and a tract of land are owned by a Mr. Tyson, of Baltimore Md., properly styled the “Chrome King.” To these quarries or mines we paid a visit during the last season, when there were upwards of 70 hands employed in and about the mines, independent of those engaged in hauling the chrome to market. There are two shafts sunk, from which the ore or mineral is taken. They have descended to the amazing depth of three hundred feet. The mouths of the shafts have nothing dissimilar in their appearance to that of an ordinary well, probably a little wider. They descend perpendicularly some 75 feet, then strike off in an oblique direction for a distance, then perpendicularly again, and so on to the bottom of the pits, the men being, as we are told, some fifty yards further south at the bottom than at the entrance. The chrome is drawn up by mule power. Two buckets about the size of a flour barrel are attached to a rope at each end. While one is being emptied the other is being filled. Some 300 yards distant is the mill for grinding the chrome preparatory to barreling it. Here they have a water-power excelled by few, having the advantage of all the water of “Octoraro Creek” if needed. From here there is a shaft runs (connected by machinery to the mill) to the mines, and there attached to pumps for the purpose of pumping the water from the pits. Strangers are at liberty to descend into the pits, having a torch and a man to lead the way for them; but the “trip” down is a dangerous one, requiring care and caution, as the rounds of the ladder are continually wet and slippery. Owing to the constant dripping, it is the most beautiful place to get a suit of clothes spoiled, and those desiring to see the wonders of underground work had better prepare themselves with an oil-cloth suit. The magnitude of the business done here cannot be well comprehended by the mere reading of a meager description of it. This is said to be the richest vein in the known world.

Chrome ore is composed of the oxyd of iron and chromic acid. This is the acid, of all the salts called “chromates,” that are now very extensively used in the arts. Chromic acid possesses the remarkable property of igniting ether when brought into contact with it; and some method may yet be employed for using it in the manufacture of igniting compounds as a substitute for phosphorous and the chlorate of potassa. Chromic acid combined with potash is the most common form that is used in the arts. In this relationship it is called the bichromate of potash; its color is a deep orange, and in form it is a beautiful crystalline salt. It is used as a mordant for coloring black on wool, and for making black ink when combined with logwood; it colors orange and yellow on cotton goods, and the oxyd of chrome is a common green pigment employed in lithography, copperplate and steel plate printing. Its green color is very permanent, and this quality renders it well adapted for printing bank notes for which purpose it is now much used. The oxyd of chromium when reduced to fine powder is one of the best reducing and polishing substances for metals known, and which we think is even superior to the finest emery for polishing steel. The best iridium pointed gold pens become useless when used for writing signatures for a few hours over the green chrome ink that is printed on bank bills.

Village Record 27th October 1866

A Visit to the Chrome Mines of Chester County

The immense piles of serpentine rock, blasted and drawn from the bowels of the earth, in West Nottingham, Chester county, and at Wood’s Mine over the Octoraro, in Lancaster county, in one of the loops made by that remarkably crooked stream, surprise and astonish a stranger for the first time, as evidence of long years of labor, and of wealth, in a part of the country called, in the neighborhood, the “Barrens.” For agricultural purposes, the immediate barren ridge of serpentine rock, like that near West Chester, will never be very available, but there are great valleys and spots in it made productive, and, viewed at a distance not without enchantment. This barren ridge is the cropping out of an immense body of serpentine rock, on a vastly larger scale than any near West Chester, and is dotted over with black, pitch pine trees, large enough for saw logs, which it is said make the best quality of floorboards.

The Baltimore Central Railroad passes along the eastern margin of the “black barrens” to the Rising Sun village, keeping on the ridge dividing the waters of the Octoraro and North East creek, without bridges. Since the completion of the railroad to this point a great deal of grain heretofore hauled to Oxford, reaches depots much nearer; among them, Mr. Stubbs’ in West Nottingham, admirably arranged for shipping grain.

One of the fords on the Octoraro for grain teams and other travel is Blackburn’s at the mouth of Black Run. A petition was presented at the last Court of Chester county for a bridge view at this point, in conjunction with a jury of view from Lancaster county. The viewers Charles K. McDonald Esq., James R. Ramsey and R. Haines Passmore, of Chester county, and Messrs. Russell, Housekeeper and McCullough, of Lancaster county, met at the proposed site on Saturday, Oct. 13th, and unanimously agreed to report in favor of a bridge – unquestionably a correct conclusion. The solid rock will dispense with much of the usual masonry and excavations of foundations. The ford at present is a dangerous one, and in high water in the winter season. The secluded, romantically situated Nottingham Center kept by Mr. Melrath, where the township elections are held and the kindliness hospitality and goodness of heart are found, with patriarchal simplicity is on one of the main roads, a mile and a half or so from the fording.

Wood’s Chrome mine is about three mile southwest of Melrath’s, and is worked on an extensive [illegible word]. The water is pumped from the mines by machinery put in motion by the water power of the Octoraro. A shaft of wood over a quarter of a mile long, six inches square, and resting on iron wheels, not unlike car wheels, is worked backwards and forwards, on these wheels or pulleys, by the crank of a powerful waterwheel. This shaft works the pump that runs down into the mine, said to be about 600 feet deep and still progressing profitably. The chrome is in the rock form and to an observer resembling the serpentine rock, but heavy like iron in weight. It is the chromate of iron. Chrome, the books say, is white, brittle and hard. Its oxide communicates to glass a durable green, which resists the strongest fire. It is employed at the manufactory of Sevres, in France, to give a fine green to the enamel of porcelain. It forms the coloring matter of the emerald, actynonolite, and serpentine. Chromic yellow is employed for painting furniture, carriages etc. This is a chromate of lead, a manufactured article. Chromate of iron is worth from $40 to $60 a ton, and eventually becomes a valuable and important article of commerce and of the shops.

The water power at Wood’s mine is used also to crush the ore and grind it fine enough to be put into barrels for transportation. A barrel of it weighs 1200 pounds, and four barrels make a load for a team of four horses. The agricultural improvements of the southwestern part of the county are not behind what are esteemed the most highly improved parts of the county. To convince anyone of this would only require a short visit by railway to the farm of Charles K. McDonald Esq., or other that might be named, equally accessible. Their fruit is less injured than other parts of the county. The apple crop there is a very good one this year.

The road from Wood’s mine leads up the Octoraro through a well improved country, to Pine Grove ford and iron works of Enos Pennock Esq., formerly county commissioner of Chester county. He is rebuilding his dam torn away by a freshet, and expects to resume the rolling of boiler iron this winter. No part of the county is now more attractive than Scrogy, highly improved, a well watered and productive soil, dotted all over with fine houses and barns, settled with an enterprising and intelligent people.

Daily Local News 16th February 1880

Two Men Crushed to Death – We are not often called on to chronicle a more fearful calamity than the sad fate of two miners at the Wood Chrome Mine, along the Octoraro, on Saturday last. William Mack and Edward Trainer were at work in the end of a drift by the main shaft, when a huge rock left its soft resting place in the muddy wall that enclosed the deep shaft, and rolling on its victims crushed them to death. The “Woods Pit”, as it is mostly called, is one of the oldest mines operated by the “Tyson Mining Company,” of Baltimore. It is located just south of Carter’s bridge, on the Octoraro creel. This creek here forms the boundary line between West Nottingham township and Lancaster county. Great excitement was caused in this mostly quiet neighborhood and a messenger was sent to Nottingham Station to telegraph for a coroner and to notify the relatives of those who had so suddenly met such an untimely end. William Mack leaves a wife and two small children, and their sorrow is described as heartrending in the extreme. Edward Trainer was aged 23 years and unmarried; both were exemplary men and leave a host of friends to mourn their loss.

Daily Local News 21st February 1885

Chrome Mines Purchased – A Lancaster paper of Friday says: Abner C. Carter, of Kirk’s Mills, Little Britain township, has recently purchased from the Tyson Mining Company, of Baltimore, Md., the old Chrome Mines, known as “Wood’s Pit,” lying along the Octoraro, and the Chester county line, consisting of two hundred acres, for $5,250. These are known to be the oldest mines in the country, and at one time were the most extensive and contained the purest quality of chrome of any in the United States. Chrome was first known to be discovered as far back as 1830, by Henry Carson, an old English mineralogist, and afterwards purchased by Isaac Tyson, of Baltimore, the founder of the Tyson Mining Company, of Baltimore, Md., who is now deceased, but it is carried on more extensively with James Tyson as President. The above company is considered the largest and wealthiest mining company in the world. Mr. Carter was formerly connected with a chrome firm of New York as general superintendent, has had a portion of his land leased for several years who has been seeking for chrome. They shut down work some time ago, as they had not sufficient power to keep the water out of the shafts.

Daily Local News
3rd April 1916


As is known to scientists or geologists, Chester county is rich in mineral deposits, even gold having been found in small quantities. Corundum is one of the valuable minerals mined, and lead, iron, and graphite are found in large quantities.

One of the deposits which had not been worked recently is chrome, This has been found in considerable quantities.

The barrens south of Oxford are said to have advanced in value, on account of its use at the present time for the manufacture of dyestuffs. It was years ago mined extensively in the barrens, but for a long time little chrome has been taken out. Several farms in East Nottingham and Elk townships have chrome leases on them giving the Tyson mining Company, of Baltimore, the right to take out mineral. The variety found in Elk township is sand chrome, which was obtained by washing the gravel, in the manner of pacer mining for gold.

Rock chrome was formerly taken out at Wood’s Pit, Fulton township, Lancaster county. Chrome or chromium is plentiful in Hungary, Sweden, and in various sections of America. Chromic oxide is the coloring ingredient in emerald and is used in porcelain painting. 

Chromate of lead is known to artists as chrome yellow.

Bichromate of potash, prepared from chrome ironstone, has many uses in the arts.

There are still large deposits of chrome in Elk township barrens. E. Stanley Grier owns a big scope of this land, and should the demand and price become certain he could produce the mineral in quantity.

The mining operations of the Tyson Mining Company in that section were once extensive, a large number of men being employed.

In the past few weeks people from Wilmington have searched in the neighborhood south of Oxford for deposits of chrome that could be worked profitably. It is said their find has been satisfactory, and that John Cain, of Lombard, has been engaged to superintend the mining of the chrome. The shortage of dye material, owing to the war, is becoming acute, and the revival of chrome mining may add something to the activity of this part of the country. At any rate, it is to be given a trial, although we have not been informed of the exact spot where operations will commence.

Daily Local News 31st December 1917

An Oxford , Pa., special of December 30 in a Philadelphia paper says: Discovery of a large body of chrome ore in several forgotten mines near Oxford, Chester county, is expected to relieve the serious shortage in the metal, one of the most essential products in the manufacture of munitions. The mines were discovered through a search made by Government and local engineers. Since the beginning of the war there has been an overwhelming demand for chrome steel. When munition companies in this country were besieged by European nations for war materials in the Fall of 1914, it was immediately realized that, unless additional chrome deposits were located somewhere in the United States the supply of the metal would be exhausted. 

For the past three years American engineers have been making a vigorous search for the ore, and recently they found that the old mine in Chester county contained considerable high-grade ore. The mines were originally discovered in 1827 by Isaac Tyson, of Baltimore, and for a number of years he practically supplied the demand for England and the United States. For approximately thirty years the deposits constituted the only known sources of supply of chromic iron ore in the country. The ore was laboriously mined and hauled five miles by wagon to the railroad, whence it was shipped to Port Deposit. From there it was sent by boat to Baltimore, where it was crushed in a building built for that purpose. A large portion then was shipped to England for use of British dye and chemical manufacturers. 

In 1848 the industry in this country underwent a severe change because of the discovery in Asiatic Turkey of several deposits of high-grade chromic iron ore. As a result of the development of these mines in the next ten years the American industry suffered a decline from which it never recovered. The Turkish miners worked for sixteen cents a day, and this cheap labor, together with cheap water transportation, eliminated the mines owned by Tyson. The increased cost of labor here, due to the Civil War, was another important factor. Other chromite deposits were discovered later in South Africa, Australia, and French Oceania, and for the last few years the chief sources of supply have been Rhodesia, New Caledonia, Turkey, and Greece. In 1913 the entire world’s supply consisted of 49,772 tons, and this was increased in 1914 to 74,686 tons, with but 691 tons produced in the United States. American imports in 1915 amounted to 76,458 tons.

With munitions manufacturers in dire need of the ore, Government engineers in 1916 made a search of the country and located deposits of a very low grade in the States of Washington, Wyoming, and California. Those three States last year produced 40,000 tons, while the imports increased to 114,685 tons. Because the ore found in the Western States had to be shipped a great distance to the principle market centers in the East engineers renewed their search and then found the old Tyson mines, which were filled with water.

The property, which consists of 1,000 acres, slants across the State boundary into Cecil county, Md. There are three mines on the property, and upon the dumps engineers have found considerable quantity of the desired ore. Work has now stated to pump out the shafts, and later they will be explored with the purpose of blocking out the material.

In the old days the crude ore never was milled, but was hand-picked and chipped in that condition. It is now proposed to apply modern methods and mill the material, by which the engineers expect to get a product containing not less than fifty per cent of chromic oxide, which is worth a minimum of $50 or more a ton. 

F. Lynwood Garrison, of Philadelphia, consulting engineer for the United States Bureau of Mines and Chairman of the National Manganese Commission, is in charge of the resurrection of the mines. He says that present demand for the ore is practically unlimited, and its need is becoming a very serious matter.

Daily Local News 25th March 1918

Owing to the scarcity of chrome in this country it is badly needed by the government. Officials have been investigating these mines with the intention of re-opening them, which is now likely to be done at an early date. 

In the Recorder’s office last week, at Lancaster, a deed was given by F. Lynwood Garrison to the Chrome Mining Company for “all mining rights and mining privileges granted to Isaac Tyson, Jr., in Lancaster county for the valuable consideration not mentioned.” 

It appears that when these properties were sold by the Tyson Chrome Company after mining ceased the Tyson family reserved all mining rights and privileges, and that was what has been purchased by the new Chrome Mining Company, which is supposed to be in the interests of the Government. The largest of these mines is located on the farm of Jesse Wood, along the Octoraro, which at this point is the dividing line between Lancaster and Chester counties. They had been worked to a great depth. One of them was seven hundred feet. While the ore was of good quality, on account of water it became expensive to mine, and ore could be imported from other sections for less than it could be mined for. But at present prices, and with the improved pumps and machinery of these times, there is no doubt it can be made profitable, and it is generally believed by people of that section that operations will begin a very short time. 

This deposit is one of many that appear in veins in southern Chester county. In West Nottingham and London Britain mines were opened and operated many years ago, but abandoned.

Daily Local News 26th March 1918

Chrome Mines Still Undeveloped

Recently there was published the report of E. F. Bliss, of the U.S. Geological Survey, of the chrome deposits in southern Chester county. E. F. Bliss is Miss Eleanor Frances Bliss, the daughter of a U.S. Army officer. She visited this section last Fall, spending some time around Rising Sun, and inspected Wood’s Pit, London Britain township, and other places. She was accompanied by another lady, Miss Anna Jones. Her report shows that she took the matter up with thoroughness.

The Wood’s Pit property was originally sold by the heirs of Thomas Wood to Isaac Tyson, Jr., and the mining of chrome was begun around 1820. When Abner Carter bought the tract from the Tyson Mining Company in 1885, the company reserved the mineral right, which stipulates that $1 per ton royalty shall be paid to the owner of the property for mineral taken out. The Tyson some years ago sold to the Octoraro Water Company 440 acres in West Nottingham with the mineral rights included.

It is probable that the right to the chrome in much of the chrome-bearing land in this section will have to be established, as the Tyson Mining Company, in disposing of the real estate reserved mineral rights on many properties.

At the same time if there is enough chrome in the old diggings to help win the war, the people who own the land will not object strongly to it being taken out. There are men yet alive who know more of the character of the deposits in Wood’s Pit and the Line Pit at Rock Springs, because they worked in the deep shafts from which the ore was taken.

There have been inspections and talk of pumping water out of the shaft, but nothing else. The shaft is said to be 700 feet deep. There has, however, been no actual work in these mines, which may be developed later.

Daily Local News 16th May 1918

A Lancaster exchange says: Two leases for mining privileges covering tracts if chrome lands in lower Lancaster county, Chester county and Maryland, and aggregating more than 1,000 acres, were placed on record in the offices of the Recorder yesterday. The leases are executed to W. Frank Gorrecht and Harry B. Cochran, of this city and embrace practically all of the mining rights in that locality, once owned by Isaac Tyson, Jr., deceased. One lease is given by the Octoraro Water Company, a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, for nearly 500 acres in Chester county, and also embracing the mining rights on large tracts of land in Lancaster and Chester counties, and in Maryland, which were purchased by the company from the Tyson estate some thirteen years ago. Included in these mining rights are the famous Woods mine at Little Britain township, which at one time produced the entire supply for the world, but has been lying idle for nearly half a century. 

The other lease is given by Mrs. Annie H. Peebles, and covers a tract of 176 acres in Fulton township.

Coatesville Record 9th September 1937

Another attempt to resume operations at the chromite mines in Fulton and Little Britain townships, in Lancaster county, and in West Nottingham township, in Chester county, will be made in the near future by the American Chrome company, with headquarters in Philadelphia.

The first operation will be started at the mine on the farm of Jesse Wood on the west side of the East Branch of the Octoraro creek in Little Britain township. The work was to be started today but Mr. Wood said the machinery has not yet been delivered. It was understood, however, that the machinery had reached Nottingham.

Abandoned in 1884

An attempt to operate the mine during the World War was made by the Bethlehem Steel company but due to numerous difficulties the work of clearing the mine, which was abandoned in 1884, was halted. The mining rights were originally held by the Tyson Mining company, of Baltimore, which later, according to reports, sold them to the Octoraro Water and Power company along with the water rights. The Octoraro company also owns 440 acres on the east bank of the creek, opposite the Wood farm, which it purchased at the same time it secured the rights to the Wood farm, about 1903.

The chromite mines in Lancaster and Chester counties are reputed to be the largest in the United States and it is believed that the yield would exceed any of the chromite mines in the world if they could be reopened. The earliest worked deposits of chromite were those in the serpentine of the Bare Hills, near Baltimore. It is now mined in Southern Rhodesia, Quebec, New California [Caledonia?], India, Greece, Asia Minor, Ural Mountains and California. It is also found at Hoboken, N.J., and in various parts of North Carolina.

Last year the Bethlehem Steel company made an investigation at an old mine in West Nottingham township, but nothing more was heard of the work after the drill was removed.

Largest of Group

The mine on the Wood farm is reported to be the largest of the group. The valuable metal was discovered there the day the Tyson company decided to abandoned its work, according to old timers. During the World war, the government is reported to have spent $80,000 attempting to sieve the metal from the Black run.

Chromite is a member of the spinel group of minerals, an oxide of chromium and ferrous iron. It is the chief commercial source of chromium and its compounds. It crystallizes in regular octahedra, but it usually found as grains or as granular to compact masses. In its iron-black color with sub-metallic luster and absence of cleavage it resembles magnetite (magnetic iron ore) in appearance, but differs from this in being only slightly if at all magnetic and in the brown color of its powder.

The theoretical formula corresponds with chromic oxide and ferrous oxide. The ferrous oxide is, however, usually partially replaced by magnesia and chromic oxide by alumina and ferric oxide, so that there may be a gradual passage to picotite and chrome-spinel. Much of the material mined as ore does not contain more than 40 to 50 per cent of chromic oxide.

Chrome-iron ore is largely used in the preparation of chromium compounds for use as pigments (chrome-yellow etc.) and in calico printing.

Oxford Press 18th June 1941

Uncle Sam is spending $10,000 to bring back the old chrome mines of southern Lancaster county.

Foot by foot, U. S. geologists are worrying out the secrets of deep-hidden deposits of chromite with the aid of instrument so delicate that if you stand on the ground beside one of them and shift your weight from one foot to the other, the indicator needles dip.

America needs chrome - needs it even more as the long sea lanes by which the crucial metal has been coming to this country close one by one. America needs chrome for the super-hard steel in a dozen kinds of armament and most particularly to line the barrels of rapid-fire anti-aircraft guns whose fierce heat will melt any other metal used says the Lancaster Sunday News.

That’s why you won’t have elaborate chrome grills on your 1942 car – if any. Deposits of chrome have been found in four far-western states, but always in such remote places that it is almost impossible to get out.

So that’s why down on the 200 acre forest and farmland around the historic Woods Mine near New Texas, the prospectors are hard at work. They’re U. S. Geological Survey men, working with the cooperation of the U. S. Department of mines and the Pennsylvania Department of Internal Affairs.

Tripping over an outcrop of chromite used to be the most effective way of finding the stuff, and enough was located on the Woods tract in years past to amass several sizeable fortunes. But today finding the ore is a different problem.

If America is to defend herself from air attack with chrome from the barrens of Lancaster County, it will be because of a couple of German-built precision instruments, one of them lent by a Swedish-Canadian geologist.

As Wallace Lee, U. S. geologist heading the survey grumbles, “The instrument is wonderful. If you had a pile of ten million pennies, and took one away, the gravimeter would show the difference. But why is thunder doesn’t the United States start making instruments of its own? If this one breaks an expert repairman from Canada has to be rushed here to fit it.”

He’s convinced that American brains, if started on the job of perfecting these precision instruments, could surpass Germany, to which their making has always been conceded without much attempt to research on the subject here.

That’s why the two men who carry the gravimeter – lent free of charge by Hans Lundberg of Canada – tread so gingerly across the reviving ghosts of the old mining industry. They sling it between them on two poles, and its 128 pounds of compact machinery are borne along on very firm and considered footsteps over the roughest kind of ground. It’s worth $10,000.

So delicate is the instrument that a passing breeze can disturb its balance. It’s windy around midday and early afternoon, so the geologists work only mornings and evenings and even then they carry along a tepee-like tent which is frequently hoisted around the prima donna gadget.

To get an idea of how it works, you’ll have to imagine a scales so tricky that it would weigh a pork chop when the pig walked underneath it. That’s the method – the instrument is set solidly on a small platform atop stakes firmly set in the soil, and it records the weight of the rock beneath it. It’s possible because a heavier rock exercises stronger gravitational soil [sic]. Varying depths can be charted.

This saves a little matter of digging a hole twenty or thirty feet deep to see what’s down there. When the survey is coordinated, inside of about two weeks, drills will be brought in to check the charts now being made up. These will be a combination of the gravimeter’s evidence and that of a magnetometer.

While the gravimeter tells the weight, or density of the rock between the surface of the soil, the magnetometer reveals its magnetic properties. By comparing these, geologists hope to be able to show the drillers exactly where chromite may be expected. Even a third method will probably be used in a triple-check before the exhaustive survey is finished. This is the earth resistivity meter, a device which records the ability of the rocks beneath to conduct electricity.

The magnetometer, a smallish box worth a mere $1,000, is mounted on a surveyor’s tripod. The gravimeter is much more elaborate, though still quite compact. It has many layers of insulation around the delicately balanced machinery inside and storage batteries keep the temperature there even to the tiny fraction of a degree.

The magnetometer measures one part in 40,000 while the gravimeter measures one part in 80,000,000 and the resistivity meter one part in 100,000. So the Lundberg-lent instrument is depended on to give the most accurate clues to the presence of chrome ore.

The de luxe doodlebug is expected to show just where the ore may be found because of the geological nature of the stuff. It always occurs in serpentine rock.

Serpentine which crops out near the place where the Lancaster – Chester border meets the Mason-Dixon line is part of a great strip of this rock which extends clear down to the coastal plain of Georgia. Chromite might occur any place along the line. However, the geologists know it has been found in Lancaster county, so here is the most logical place to look for more, particularly since there are probably quantities of the ore which the old-time miners could never have suspected was there 75 years ago when the Woods mine was in its glory.

Serpentine weighs about 2.6 times as much as water, while chromite weighs over four times as much as water, so that the difference in density will show up sharply on the dials.

Nearness to the great steel plants of the East makes the Lancaster chrome field vastly more important than those of California, Oregon, Montana, and Wyoming, the only other states where chromite has been found. Invariably the possible mine sites in those states would be so far from transportation facilities that mining the ore would be impractible.

As for foreign sources, one is in Rhodesia, a British possession in Africa, another is in New Caledonia, French, and another is in Turkey. Bethlehem Steel owns deposits in Cuba, closest of all. But even might become a dangerously long haul in time of a sea-war, to which the sinking of an American ship in mid-Atlantic furnishes a threatening preview.

Many times since the fabulous chrome mines closed down in the late 1860’s the rumor has spread that they would be reopened. Excitement has been justified, for the mines yielded between 100,000 and 125,000 tons of chromite worth some $10,000,000 in their prime.

Woods mine was the biggest, but scores of other shafts were suck in the vicinity by Isaac Tyson, Jr., “Chrome king of the world.” His monopoly of chrome makes that of the Mellons over aluminum look sick, Lee says. Nobody else had a look-in during his lifetime. For many years Lancaster mines produced the entire world’s supply of chrome. Then other deposits turned up in remote sections of California and Tyson bought them up immediately.

Never was the chromite smelted down and made into actual metal during the Tyson regime, although he spent millions of dollars trying to accomplish it. The value of chrome was a pigment in paints, and for making bi-chromates.

When he died in 1865 he left his tremendous estate to a pair of sons, in effect disinheriting two other sons, a daughter, and his widow. Litigation dragged though the courts until the rich mines were abandoned and the Tyson interests ruined. Since then Tyson heirs have made one effort to recoup their fortunes by reopening the Woods Mine, and they were able to find and dig out a body of chrome 100 feet long, 50 feet wide, and 85 feet deep, now a great cavity in one wall of the shaft.

Not until 1937 was another real effort made to reopen the workings. A company controlled largely by Lancaster men, pumped a large quantity of water out of the Woods shaft. However, it was discovered that keeping the mine dry would require pumping equipment too costly to justify the investment.

So once again it seemed as though a layer of dust would gather upon equipment on the Woods tract, as it has accumulated over the crude old pumps and windlasses and horse-powered equipment of three quarters of a century ago, when candles were the only light by which miners could work and ore was hauled in big wagons to the docks of Baltimore.

Daily Local News 19th July 1941

Prospecting for chrome and other valuable mineral deposits continues in the “Barrens” and near Nottingham. Boring in the Woods meadow by representatives of the Bureau of Mines, have reached 174 feet. Much interest is taken in its research work being done in this serpentine rock strip, but not much information is gleaned by those visiting the scenes of activities.

Daily Local News 25th May 1965

...

The discovery of large chromite deposits in Turkish Asia Minor and in California brought about a decline in chrome mining in Maryland and Pennsylvania but reports disagree as to why. Exhaustion of ore, depth of mining, inadequate pumping facilities, decline in price and in some cases litigation over mining rights have been cited; all these reportedly combined with mismanagement were probably contributing factors.

The Wood mine in the State Line District was the last to be held open as a reserve against possible failure of shipments from California but after 1882 it, too, was closed. Intermittent production of placer chromite continued in the White Barrens, Chester County until about 1900, however, much of the production was never recorded. ...

Daily Local News 10th January 1968

Mystery Hole hides Secrets of the Past

By George Brice (of the Local News Staff)

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Historical documents and geological maps note the quarries were part of the serpentine belt, marked by greenish-gray rock and scrub pines, which extends northeastward from Cecil and Harford Counties, MD., across southeastern Lancaster County and through West and East Nottingham and Elk Townships in southern Chester County. It crops out also near Unionville and south of West Chester.

This serpentine belt provided, in addition to feldspar, a large portion of the chromite demand of the world before 1865 and a substantial part of it until about 1880. Chromite ore production not only satisfied the limited domestic demand of the 19th century, but was exported to Europe in large quantities.

Chromite ore used in the manufacture of chemical compounds, pigments and dyes before the metallurgical and refractory uses were developed. The same ore was also used in alloying steel after the Civil War.

Looking for Salts

In the 1820s Isaac Tyson on Baltimore sent men to the serpentine district in the Chester County “Barrens” to look for Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate), but they ran into chrome or chromite, which was then in demand for pigments.

One of the most productive chrome lodes was the Wood Mine, just over the West Nottingham Township line in Lancaster County. It reached a depth of 800 feet. Others were the Scott-Engine-Kirk mines, in the present park property. Placed chromite was abundant in the bed of Black Run in West Nottingham.

Discovery of large chromite deposits in southern Africa and Rhodesia brought an abrupt end to underground chrome mining in Maryland and Pennsylvania along with reported exhaustion of domestic ore, particularly in California.

The Wood Mine was the last open held open as a reserve against possible failure of shipments from California, but it closed too after 1882. Intermittent production of placer chromite continued in the Barrens until about 1900. An attempt to renew placer mining during World War I never materialized, Dr. Gillingham said.

“Chester County has a notable mining heritage,” Dr. Gillingham said. In addition to chromite and feldspar mines, there were the Wheatley lead-zinc mines near Phoenixville; the iron mines along the French Creek and in Warwick Township in northern Chester County, which provided iron ore for guns and cannons during the American Revolution; corundum mines near Unionville; Brinton’s Quarry were serpentine rock was mined, and Kaolin clay mines at Kaolin [?].

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Sunday Local News 11th October 1987

The barren ridges of W. Nottingham: held a fortune for some lucky people

By Douglas Harper (of the Local News Staff)

The barren serpentine ridges of West Nottingham may have disappointed farmer, but they made a fortune for a few lucky men.

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But a century before that, the Barrens were the site of Chester County’s boom industry: chrome mining.

In 1827 a man called Isaac Tyson Jr. stood in a Baltimore market, watching a farmer’s two-wheeled cart rumble by. In the back of the cart was a barrel of cider, propped up by some large rocks.

Tyson was an amateur mineralogist with na interest in chrome. He may have been the only man in America at the time who could have recognized the rare chromium ore laced through those rocks.

CHROME WAS in demand. England, with its huge woolen industry, used chrome to make a red dye. Chrome would soon become the key ingredient in the manufacture of stainless steel as well. But it was notoriously hard to find.

Tyson discretely followed the bony nag and two-wheeled cart back to a farm near the Barrens in Lancaster county. Tyson soon bought the farm, and got rights to dig on several others nearby. He struck the mother-lode of the chrome vein on the Lancaster side of Octoraro Creek, in the deep elbow near Fremont, West Nottingham.

Tyson imported Irish laborers, and within a few years this placid spot was the site of the Wood Chrome Mine, the largest such operation in the world. For the next 20 years Tyson was the principle – practically the only – supplier of chrome on the planet.

AT FIRST the local farmers sold Tyson rights to dig their land for low prices. But they soon got wise to the value of the rocks he was pulling out: chrome ore sold for $25 a ton in 1874.

West Nottingham farms that sold for $6 an acre in normal time shot up to $100 an acre after Tyson’s appearance. Area farmers hoped to find the telltale heavy black pellets in their fields or while fixing their roads. A chance discovery like that could make someone rich.

Tyson worked a string of mines along the Barrens from southern Lancaster County, through West Nottingham and into Maryland. Other mining concerns also moved into the area, but Isaac Tyson Jr. was the undisputed “Chrome King.”

HIS MINES probed to fantastic depths. One plunged 300 feet underground. Shafts catacombed though the Barrens, crossing from Pennsylvania to Maryland deep under the earth. The only way down was through a mouth the size of a well down a slippery ladder. There were frequent injuries, and in 1880 a boulder crushed two men to death deep in a West Nottingham mine.

The mines were narrow, muddy, and wet. Tyson had to constantly pump out the water that seeped in. In 1874 the miners went on strike, and in 10 days the shafts filled up.[this was the Moro Phillip’s mine, not the Tyson mines. - MB]

Seventy men worked in Tyson’s mines in 1861. Others hauled the material to Port Deposit, on the Chesapeake. From there it was sent to Baltimore, then shipped to Liverpool.

CHROME WAS discovered in Turkey in 1848, and later in California and southern Africa. The chrome mining business fell off sharply after the Civil War. But the Barrens were still among the world’s principle suppliers of chrome in 1880.

Tyson’s mines were abandoned in 1884, though Bethlehem Steel reopened them briefly in the First World War. Feldspar, used to make fine pottery, continued to be mined in the Barrens until the 1930s.

Little remains of this once-thriving industry except a crossroads hamlet named Chrome in East Nottingham township and the mine shaft holes.