Knoxville daily chronicle. [volume] (Knoxville, Tenn.) 1870-1882, 1873-03-27
COAL AND IRON IN TENNESSEE.

or practical knowledge of the coal and iro1
wealth of East Tennessee as Gen. Jno
L. Wilder, who for the past seven years
has been literally living amid our coal an6
iron beds. He has favored US with adj
| vanced sheets of an article on the coal anC
iron of Tennessee, which is such valu
able document that we give most of it in
| full to our readers. It is mine of knowl-
edge and should be sent TO every coal and
iron man in the United States. Such i'll
formation disseminated over the name OF
| Wilder is an advertisement for East Ten
nessee, worth-no one can say how much.
| The letter is as follows
On the northwestern side of the valley
is the level-topped Cumberland mountain
plateau, sixty miles wide, with it's south
eastern side next to the valley of East Ten
nessee. For a distance of $50 miles from
Sale Creek Thirty miles above Chat
tanooga) to Cumberland Gap, it is tilted up
or folded back against the horizontally
stratified Cumberland mountains. This
uplifted edge is called Walden's Ridge, and
is the southeastern limit of the great APP
palachian coal field which runs entirely
across the State, from northeast to south
west, WIFI dli eISNdllOiI VI t"O ticuSiIN
feet and an average of sixty miles wide by
two hundred long, making q coal. field of
six thousand square miles, or 3 $40 acres !;
exceeding by 454, 600 acres the entire coal
area of Great Britain, including England,
Scotland Wales and Ireland.
This wonderful valley of East Tennessee
is lowest near the base of the Cumberland
mountain, containg the coal fields Oh its
northwest side. All it's streams head in
North Carolina and Western Virginia and
drain northwest into the Tennessee, each
river forming a natural highway down
stream to the coal fields. Nearly every
ridge in the valley contains minerals Of
some kind, the cuts through which the riv-
ers flow forming natural openings to the
veins of iron ore which outcrop in nearly
every ridge. whilst the great Allegheny
chain is ribbed and scanned with veins of
iron ore of nearly every known variety.
From the same range are taken large guam
titles of copper at Ducktown, whilst all
along its northern base runs great broad
belt of roofing slate and most beautiful
black marble intersected with snow-white
veins. Along the base of the Cumberland
range runs entirely through the State, a
low range or ridge of about two hundred
feet altitude above drainage, containing in
Variably two veins of red fossiliferOus iron
ore, varying in thickness from three to ten
feet, cropping out near the crest of the
ridge on its southern slope and dipping at
an angle of about forty-five degrees to the
northwest. 1t is supposed to extend under
the coal field; at all events it crops out at
precisely the same geological horizon on
the opposite side of Walden's Ridge, in
Sequatchie Valley and in Elk Gap, oppo-.
site Knoxville, localities one hundred
miles apart and each ten miles from the
place of disappearance of the ore at the
southwest base of the mountain.
EAST TENNESSEE COAL.
The coal in Walden's Ridge is
dry, semi-bituminous or rather
semi-anthracte, working raw in the
lockwood about two and three fOurths Of
ton of coal to smelt one ton of pig metal.
The ore averages a yield of sixty per cent.
of iron, and the Sub-carbOniferOus lime
stones furnish ample and excellent fluxing
material requiring twenty or twenty-five
per cent. of fiux. ITS @tfF =
Nowhere along this long line of two
hundred miles is it more than half mile
from the iron ore to the coal beds, while
the massive lime-stOnes are invariably be-
tween them the entire distance. The coal
at lockwood is very much disturbed, vary
ing from seven to over one hundred feet in
thickness. Our No. furnace has been in
blast most of the time for over four years,
making fine quality of pig-iron for rails
with only one kind of ore. Our No.
furnace of forty (40) tons capacity, will be
put to work early in the spring, when we
will turn out, with furnaces, seventy-fve
tons of pig-iron per day, at an average cost
of Sl4 per ton. At the base of the Ale
ghany Chain, OH the south side of the VAL
ley, is wide chain of high knobs, in
many of which are wonderful beds of the
brown hematite iron ores, some of which
contain manganese. In the Allegheny
Chain are ineXhaustible veins of brown
hematite, and in the high mountains of
the Blue Ridge are large veins and lodes of
magnetic iron ores. All these must go
with the rivers to the coal fields on the
northwest side of the great valley, for this
reason-that it requires one ton and half
of good iron ore to make one ton of pig
iron, and it takes about three tons of coal
to reduce it, and three or four more tons of
coal to convert and finish it into bar iron;
thus using seven tons Of coal to produce
one ton of merchantable iron, and one
third of ton of limestone, making in all
seven tons and half of fuel and fluX.
These are found contiguous to large and
| persistent beds ofiron ore, only requiring a
mixture of one-half of the brown hema-!
tite and magnetic ores to make merchant
dU1e lIOIl, III lOT any use III arts OF CULT
merce, and giving the advantage to man.
ufacturers located near the COAL in proper
ton to the greater tonnage Of fuel and fux
used to the vastly lesser weights and
| freights, of ores, required to produce one
| ton of iron in other words saving in the
production of pig iron one half the trans
fportation, and in bar or plate iron or nails,
nearly 500 per cent. This is the advantage
enjoyed by the manufacturers on the N.
w. side of the valley over those located on
the S. E. side, where are plenty of ores and
no coal. Thus isinsured to the N. w. side
of the valley, along the proposed route of
! the Cincinnati Southern Railroad con-
tinuous line of works and dense produ-
cling population. Afew words might be
added, giving geological outline OF a
cross section of this valley and its noun
North Carolina, with the range of the
Blue Ridge, an enormous azoic upheayal,
ribbed with iron ores, thence northwest
crossing granite formations to the meta
| Of no