About Iron Ore.

About Iron Ore.
From Mr. Grasty’s letter to the Manufactures’ Record.

A word now concerning the ores close to Charlestown. Captain John Howard, a practical miner, who has been operating in and prospecting for iron ore for fifty years, having provided ores for the old Shannondale furnace, five miles from Charlestown, away back in the forties, talked with me about the iron ore supply in this vicinity. “These ore banks,” said he, “contain ores which in mixture will produce a highgrade car-wheel iron, and are now being used by the Stickney Iron Works at Baltimore for car-wheel purposes. Much of the ore has been shipped to George Whittaker, below Baltimore, and to various points in Pennsylvania. It will average a fully fifty per cent. metallic iron, as all furnace tests have proven.”

“From an experience of forty-five years,” he went on to say, “in furnaces and mines, I am confident in giving my opinion that most valuable ores, in practically inexhaustible quantities, are to be found in unbroken strata between the bank of the Potomac and the Carnegie mine, ten miles above Charlestown, on the Shenandoah river. These ores are of especial value, because of the proximity of the ‘cold short’ and ‘red short’ varieties of hematite ore. This, taken in connection with the presence of an abundance of limestone suitable for fluxing, should serve to attract the attention of those seeking locations for the cheap manufacture of iron. It may be well to add that in Pennsylvania these valuable ores, located in the same iron belt, are becoming exhausted, and ores are now being shipped from this county to furnaces in that section..”

Prof. W. N. McDonald, a well known authority, in a report on the outcrop of a single 13 acres tributary to Charlestown, states that there is an average of 24,000 tons to the acre from the outcrop alone. But there is no trouble on the score of iron.