Mica

For the past couple of days I’ve been working on the beginnings of mica mining in the Valley. There is ample archaeological evidence that the Cherokee mined mica to some extent.
The Cherokee believed that early Spanish explorers did some mining also. In 1873, Thomas L. Clingman wrote that "the old Cherokee Indians, living in some of the western counties, used to speak of a tradition coming down in their tribe, that long ago companies of white men came on mules from the south, worked during the summer, and carried off a white metal with them..."
There was almost no market for mica prior to the Civil War. Zac McHone reportedly took a piece of mica to Marion to sell in 1870. A year or two (or three) later, things changed in the mica industry. E. B. Clapp and John G. Heap, who worked in the stove industry, started purchasing mines and mining mica for use in window pains in their stoves. They possibly owned up to twenty mines in the Valley area.

Mica mining has come and gone in the area. It probably peaked during World War II, when the United States’s supply of internationally produced mica was cut off. Everybody in the area started digging, re-opening closed mines and starting new ones. Once the war ended, the US outsourced its mica once again, and it is not mined in the Valley any more.

Not long ago, they were cutting a new road in not far from where I live. The ground glittered with pieces of mica. Too bad our government continues to support other governments of the world and not out own economy. Oh well, I’m sure some day the foreign market will be closed again and those old mines will be re-visited.