Any fourth-grader in the Old Dominion learns about Virginia’s
coalfields, but how many of you know that the Commonwealth
is the only state in the U.S. to mine kyanite; and one
of only two states that produces titanium, zircon and
vermiculite?
The Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy
reports the state produces over 30 mineral resources from
coal and oil to gold, crushed stone and more exotic substances
buried beneath our landscape.
There even may have been some diamond sightings. In 1855,
a man grading a street in Manchester, VA, which is now
a part of Richmond, found what was, at the time, the largest
diamond in the U.S. According to Richard Dietrich in Geology
and Virginia, published by the Virginia Division of Mineral
Resources in 1970, the diamond weighed 23.75 carats in
the rough and a little over 11.5 carats when it was cut.
Dietrich reported other diamond finds, including one found
in 1847 in Orange County and another in Tazewell County
in 1913.
But there are skeptics. “A diamond may have fallen
from some traveller’s pocket in Manchester, rather
than derived from local geology,” writes George
Mason geography professor Charles Grymes. Virginia’s
geology is unlikely to produce diamonds, he believes,
except in some areas west of Danville. “There’s
probably a fascinating story behind the people who claimed
to have found each diamond … and what might have
happened before the diamonds were ‘found,’”
he adds.
So, what exactly is found in Virginia? It depends on where
you look. The Old Dominion’s five physiographic
areas each yield different mineral wealth. From sand,
gravel and clay found in the Coastal Plain region to the
coalfields, natural gas, methane and some oil and crushed
stone in the southwestern Appalachian Plateau region,
the minerals industry in the Commonwealth is a $2 billion
business. As mentioned, Virginia is the only producer
in the U.S. of kyanite, a heat-resistant material used
in tiles and bricks, and the number two producer of vermiculite
found in insulation and potting soil.
Coal is perhaps what the Old Dominion is best known for,
but the Appalachian coalfields in the southwestern corner
of the state were not developed until the 1880s when railroads
made it easier to ship the mineral from the isolated area.
Coal was so abundant that geographer Grymes reports miners
would debate whether they preferred “tall coal,”
which required reaching above their heads or “short”
coal that meant back-breaking crouching. The fuel mineral
has been a controversial boom or bust resource for that
region. The Clean Air Act in the 1980s affected demand
because of requirements for low-sulfur coal. Also, over
time, easy-to-mine coal beds became exhausted requiring
more sophisticated methods for extracting the mineral.
Mining has a long history in the Commonwealth. While early
Jamestown settlers may have searched for gold, they settled
on iron as the colony’s mineral wealth. Grymes points
out that Virginia place names such as Catherine Furnace
and Clifton Forge reflect that heritage. The iron-processing
industry declined in the early 1800s when Pennsylvania
developed more efficient furnaces using coal, not readily
accessible in Virginia for another eight decades. Still,
the only Confederate producer of iron during the Civil
War, Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, produced the armor
for the iron-clad, Merrimac, which faced off against its
Union counterpart, the Monitor, in the waters off Hampton
Roads in 1862.
Other mineral resources also played a key role in the
Civil War, writes geologist Robert Whisonant. Iron, lead,
salt and niter (saltpeter) were essential to both the
Union and Confederate armies. Iron was needed for utensils,
arms and railroads; lead for bullets; salt to preserve
food and niter to make gunpowder. There were several attempts
to capture lead mines in Wythe County in southwestern
Virginia until December 1864 when Wytheville and the nearby
mines were partly burned by Union soldiers. The mines
were completely destroyed four months later. In the last
years of the war, the Wythe mines were the sole source
of bullets for Confederate soldiers.
Today, Virginia’s mineral industry ranks 22nd among
the 50 states, reports the VDMME, and non-fuel mineral
production accounts for more than 1.5 percent of the U.S.
total. Still, a diamond mine would be nice.
June 20, 2005
Nice & Curious
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