We mine minerals and metals, elements and rocks, and lots of ore.
Let's take a look at the most important minerals
we mine in America.
Click on the minerals below.
Aluminum
© S Howe-Mariskanish
Aluminum is the most common metal element mined in the earth's crust. Bauxite is aluminum ore. The main use of aluminum is in packaging, transportation, and building.
Coal is the most mined "mineral" in the United States. Really, coal isn't a mineral. It's a rock. It was formed from the carbonized plants that lived in swamps millions of years ago. Low-sulfur coal formed from fresh-water swamps. High-sulfur coal formed from salt-water swamps.
There are four types of coal mined in the United States. They are: Anthracite, Sub bituminous, Bituminous, and Lignite-ore .The harder the coal the more heat it makes.
Coal is found in 36 US
States. 24 states mine coal now. The top 7 coal-producing states in rank are:
1- Wyoming
2- West Virginia
3- Kentucky
4- Pennsylvania
5- Montana
6- Illinois
7- Texas
Click here to learn strange Coal facts.
Copper pit mine, Copper Mountain, AZ
Copyright
© 1997, Don Baccus (donb@rational.com)
Copper is mainly used in electric cables, and
wires, plumbing, switches, heating, construction, machinery, alloy castings, and
pennies. Its alloys are brass, bronze, beryllium.
Copper ore photo
© Jessica Mariskanish
Click here to learn strange Copper facts.
Fluorspar
Fluorspar is used in
making hydrofluoric acid, (that is used in pottery), ceramics, and plastic
industries. It is also used in toothpaste, emery wheels, and paint pigment.
Click here to learn strange Fluorspar facts.
Gold
A bright, yellow,
and durable, naturally-occurring metallic element, gold is gotten through
various mining methods, such as Placer, Hydraulic, Dredging, and Lode.
Gold is found
frequently with copper and lead deposits and mined as a byproduct of
these.
Gold
has been valued for thousands of years by many cultures. It is used in jewelry
and art, dentistry, and electronics, especially computers.
Click here to read strange Gold facts.
A silvery metallic element, iron has supplied us with most of our , tools and machinery and is the main metal in steel.
Lead
Galena
photo
© Jessica Mariskanish
The United States is the leading producer
of lead, a soft, blue-white metal with a low melting point. Easily gotten from
its ore minerals, lead's main use is in storage batteries. Lead
oxides are added
to glass, paint and ceramics as pigment. Lead alloys include tin and
antimony (the grid metal for storage batteries).
Lead was used by the Egyptians as early as
5000 B.C. as weight, pigment, coinage, etc... In 2000 B. C. lead was used
in Spain and China, also.
In the middle ages, stained glass windows were held together by lead
"cames".
Lead has been used in warfare since the beginning of war because of
it's so easy to melt.
Lead is a soft
bluish-white metal with a low melting point, and a high gravity point, (it's
heavy.) Lead is easily recovered from its ore
minerals. Lead oxides are added to glass, paint, and ceramics.
Lead is alloyed with antimony, copper, and bismuth.
Compounds of lead, like carbonite and acetate, are used in drugs. The main use
of lead is in batteries.
People mined lead in North Arkansas to make
bullets.
Click here to learn strange Lead facts!
Click here to tour a Lead mine!
AKA "Quicksilver" because it looks like silver, but beads up like water and can roll away, mercury is a silvery-white metallic element, liquid at regular temperatures. It has been mined and used by man for over 2,000 years. It's main ore is cinnabar, a soft reddish-brown mercury sulfide. Known as the silver stuff in older thermometers, mercury is also used in dentistry as amalgam fillings.
Click here to learn strange Mercury facts.
Frequently found with Petroleum, natural gas has been used in the U.S. for nearly two centuries. It is a naturally-occurring fuel product that can be found pure enough to use directly from it's "well", but, must be refined many times. Some of the things filtered out are: carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide.
Click here to learn strange Natural Gas facts.
Petroleum is a fossil fuel, natural resource, that you find underground. anywhere from500 to 25,000 feet underground. You will usually find natural gas with it. Scientists believe they both have the same origin.
Petroleum, is a fossil fuel. Usually found with sedimentary rocks, there are no large deposits of Petroleum found where only rocks formed under great heat and pressure are found. It is also carbon-based. But, was it formed from plants or animals? The truth is oil has both kinds of hydrocarbon compounds.
Click here to learn strange Petroleum Facts.
Salt, whose mineral form, rock salt (Halite), is important to the health of all
animals, including humans.
Click here to learn strange Salt facts.
Silver
silver coins photo
© S Howe-Mariskanish
The search for Gold and silver lured thousands of miners to the western mountains following the rush to California in 1849. At first, they mined in the Sierra Nevada mountains east of Sacramento. However, gold in this area became difficult to mine by the middle 1850’s. So the prospectors moved eastward looking for strikes. Several areas became very special mining centers during the years from 1856 to 1875. The first was southern Arizona, where silver was found south of Tucson. Other silver discoveries were made there in the following years, besides the big strike in 1877 in Tombstone.
The next strike came in the Rocky Mountains west of Denver. It drew a great rush of fortune lookers who vowed to reach "Pikes Peak or bust". Central City and Leadville grew up almost overnight in Colorado. A third area centered on Virginia City in western Nevada, and encouraged further discoveries in the desert valleys and mountains. Both these areas began as gold fields. But blue sand in Colorado and blue clay in Nevada clogged the machines the early miners used. The mines didn’t become profitable until mining companies found that the sand and clay had very good silver deposits.
Silver mining companies needed heavy machinery to dig the ore and some means of sending it to smelter. Such needs encouraged companies to build a transcontinental railroad network. Two companies began the first of these railroad systems in the early 1860’s. Starting from the east was the Union Pacific, with Irish laborers who established such towns as Cheyenne and Laramie, Wyoming.
Click here to learn strange Silver facts.
Uranium
Uranium, a silvery-white,
metallic element with the heaviest
atomic weight of all naturally-occurring elements. There is more uranium in the
earth's crust than mercury,
silver or gold, and is found in radioactive
ore at various
depths. This makes it dangerous for people to handle and hard to mine.
Located using a Geiger counter,
(pronounced GI-ger...like tiger), uranium is
mined by open pit or underground mine. The miners have to be careful not to breathe in the dust that comes off the
uranium because it could make them very sick. When it has been removed from the ground the
uranium is sent to a processing machine that cleans it. It is then sold to nuclear power plants to be used
as a source of energy.
It is a poor
conductor of electricity, and is used in weapons of mass
destruction.
Starting during World War I, uranium was used to harden steel produced for tool making. But, until the 1930’s uranium was mainly considered an unwanted left-over product from making radium. It was used to make pottery and to refine metal. When added to glass, uranium produces a range of colors from pale yellow to brilliant green.
Uranium is widely spread out in the Earth’s crust (about 2 parts per million) and is more plentiful than mercury or silver. Before WWII, uranium was of interest as source of Radium for medical use. It is also used as a coloring agent for glass and ceramics; it produces a yellow green color (Vaseline glass).
No deposits of pure uranium have been discovered. Because of this, uranium must be separated from ores (a mix of metals that the useful parts can be removed from).
Click here to learn strange Uranium facts .
Zinc
Zinc is used as a protective
coating for steel, for die casting, and it alloys with copper to make brass.
Zinc is also an essential growth element. Tennessee, Missouri, New York, and
Alaska are the most productive zinc states in the U.S.
Clink here to learn strange Zinc facts.