Barton Garnet Mine - North River, NY, USA
N 43° 40.824 W 074° 03.315
18T E 576149 N 4836810
The Barton Garnet Mine is located on the back side of Gore Mountain (better known for skiing).
Waymark Code: WMD7XV
Location: New York, United States
Date Posted: 12/03/2011
Views: 13
Even though Garnet is considered a semi-precious gemstone, the garnets that were mined here are industrial grade - used in grinding and polishing.
Barton Garnet Mine offers a guide tour of their at the on top of Gore Mountain near North River, N.Y. This is the world's largest garnet deposit. Crystals of garnet here are as big as 20" across. Collecting facet grade material is very easy, requiring little more than a hammer to break open the crystals and a watchful eye. Specimen collectors need to take more time to collect crystals intact. The mine is about four hours from New York City.
The tour provides some history and allows people to gather some garnet bits while in the open mine pit. The tour of the pit runs during the summer months, as the other months there is a fair bit of snow around! Here is some history of the mine:
Industrial garnet has been mined at the Barton Garnet Mine since 1878 when Henry Hudson Barton began mining garnet for use as sandpaper abrasives.
Henry Hudson Barton arrived in Boston in 1846. He apprenticed with a jeweler for several years. One day a gentleman visited the jeweler, showing samples of Adirondack garnet. The garnets were not gem quality, so the jeweler did not purchase them. But they would prove to be very important in a few years.
Barton moved to Philadelphia and sold woodworking materials, including sandpaper. Barton decided he could make a better quality sandpaper. He remembered the garnet samples and tracked down the gentleman who had brought them to the jewelers.
Barton ground samples of Adirondack garnet into fine grains. He used the garnet dust to make sandpaper. Several woodworking shops tested the new material for him and told him it was excellent.
Barton started mining garnet in the Adirondacks in 1878. As mining continued, he realized the size of the Gore Mountain garnet deposit - the largest deposit of garnet in the Adirondacks. In 1887 Barton purchased the entire mountain!
The miners who worked for Barton in the late 1800s used hand tools to extract garnet. They drilled holes in rock ledges which they filled with explosives. The blasts broke up the rock and miners chipped the waste away from the garnet.
The deposit was located high on the mountain, which made transporting the garnet difficult. To solve this problem, Barton had miners pick garnet in the summer. The garnet would be stored on the mountain until winter. Once snow arrived, the garnet chunks were loaded onto sleds and sent down the mountain to the railroad station! The ore was shipped to Philadelphia where it was crushed and made into sandpaper.
Roads, steam shovels, and hydraulic tools eventually replaced the sleds and hand tools. In 1924 the company built a mill at Gore Mountain. Garnet was mined, crushed, and graded on the same site.
The garnet found in the North Creek area is industrial grade. It is used mainly for abrasives. In addition to sandpaper, garnet is used in non-skid paint, emery boards, and grinding wheels. The Barton mines are still in operation and produce about 80% of the world’s abrasive garnet.
Garnet is a semi-precious gem and local craftspeople use Adirondack garnet to make jewelry.
In 1969, garnet was named the official gem of New York State.
Mine Type: Tourist Mine
Mineral Collecting: Yes
Material Mined: Gem Stone
Operation: Opencast Mine
Surface Features: No
KNOWN DANGERS:
Most of the area is filled with water - this is why they had to shut this particular mine down.
Any associated website: [Web Link]
Any Other information:
Barton's company currently supplies 80% of the industrial Garnets in the world - they own several mines in the Adirondacks.
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Visit Instructions:
Optional photograph welcomed.