Year. Feet. Miles. Feet. Miles.
1896 200 .04
1897 1,106 .21 10,343 1.96
1898 4,403 .83 2,386 .45
1899 4,857 .92 30,965 5.86
1900 23,835 4.51 33,152 6.28
1901 250 .05 1,364 .26
1903 29,040 5.50
------ ---- ------- -----
Totals 34,651 6.56 107,250 20.31
In addition to these tracks, there are about six miles of narrow gauge
tracks and about eight or nine sidings and spurs have been built in
Lawrence County for loading cordwood for shipment to Mt. Pleasant.
In Hickman County, the N. C. & St. L. Ry. has built and acquired by
purchase from private owners about seven miles of track, which it is now
engaged in extending three miles farther up Swan and Blue Buck creeks,
and some five or six miles of private tracks have been built.
The following table shows the production of phosphate rock in Tennessee,
1894-1904:
Quantity
Year. (Long tons). Value.
1894 19,188 $ 67,158
1895 38,515 82,160
1896 26,157 57,370
1897 128,723 193,115
1898 308,107 498,392
1899 462,561 1,272,022
1900 450,856 1,352,568
1901 394,139 1,186,033
1902 454,078 1,341,161
1903 445,510 1,434,660
1904 540,000 1,944,000
------- ---------
Total 3,267,834 $9,428,639
With more or less frequency, according to whether the news supply
is sufficiently good to enable them to get “their per column,”
correspondents fire into the several papers of the State some sensational
head-liny article about the new “discovery of phosphate rock at
Crossroadsville, 5 to 40 feet thick, analyzing from 60 to 90 per cent
bone phosphate of lime.” For fear of being behindhand with the news all
the papers copy it, and before the report can be corrected to its proper
reality of from 6 to 9 per cent, it has been heralded to the four corners
of the earth and its effect on future and pending sales can better be
imagined than estimated.
If one will take the reports of the geological survey he will find that
every possible deposit of phosphate rock in the State is absolutely and
positively located. There will be no new discoveries. Of course there
will be much new development, but the location of such development will
have been discovered long before.
The principal localities in the State where operations are now in
progress, are: Mt. Pleasant, Kleburn, Jameson and Century, in Maury
County; Lower Swan Creek, Twomey and Totty’s Bend, in Hickman County;
near Gallatin, in Sumner County; Wales Station, in Giles County, and near
Nashville, in Davidson County.
The principal localities where developments will gradually take place
as the demands of the business require are: Southport, Estes Bend, Bear
Creek, Neeley’s Valley, Little Bigby, West Fork, *Baptist Branch and
*Leiper’s Creek, in Maury County; Richland Creek, in Giles County;
Station Camp Creek, in Sumner County; north and west of Franklin, in
Williamson County; Brentwood and Bellevue, in Davidson County; Beech
River, in Decatur County; Tom’s Creek, Buffalo River, *Hurricane Creek
and Cane Creek, in Perry County; *Forty-eight Mile Creek, in Wayne
County; *Upper Swan and *Indian Creek, in Lewis County; *Lower Swan,
*Indian Creek, Ship’s Bend, Gray’s Bend, Persimmon, Haleys and
*Leatherwood creeks, in Hickman County.
* Blue rock.
Anything exploited outside of these known and designated deposits is
very apt to prove either a flash in the pan or will be found to be only
worked by the newspaper correspondents at so much per column.
Of the present working localities the principal one is Mt. Pleasant, and
while the property owners there are beginning to figure a little on how
much they have left, still the prevailing impression that Mt. Pleasant
is about through mining is an exceedingly mistaken one. With the present
rate of output, the visible supply of the Mt. Pleasant field proper
will last for seven years longer, without taking into consideration the
Southport field, which is practically part of the Mt. Pleasant field.
With the Southport field mining will last here at the present rate of
output for eleven years. It is very easy to understand that as work
progresses at Mt. Pleasant and the end comes more nearly in sight, some
miners drop out by selling, some by working out their small deposits and
these naturally go to the other fields above referred to. In none of the
other fields is found the persistently uniform high grade brown rock of
Mt. Pleasant except Southport, Century and Kleburn, in the two latter of
which operations are now in progress, and in the former the extension of
the Mt. Pleasant Southern Railway will soon cause development work there.
As these deposits afford practically the same grade of rock as Mt.
Pleasant proper, they will be worked out simultaneously with it and will
cater to the same market.
With their knowledge that the visible supply of this character of rock is
comparatively limited, producers are gradually increasing their prices,
and by reason of such increase they are slowly reducing their output and
giving opportunity for the marketing of the lower grades in the other
fields, notably the Swan Creek and Indian Creek deposits in Hickman
County.
This, of course, means that the producers at Mt. Pleasant will make more
money from their product, and that it will last a considerably longer
time, so that it is safe to say that mining in force will be carried on
at Mt. Pleasant and kindred localities for at least twenty years.
During the next decade, to supply the diminution of Mt. Pleasant’s
output, will come the gradual development of the vast blue rock field
of Maury, Hickman and Lewis counties, and the white rock of Perry and
Decatur counties, which form the backbone of the phosphate industry in
Tennessee, and whose millions of tons will cause these counties to be
considered the phosphate reservoir of the world for the next seventy-five
or one hundred years.
The change of base will be gradual and easy, and the trade will have
ample opportunity and time to adjust its operations so as to utilize the
lower grade blue rock as it becomes advisable and necessary to do so. Its
many points of superiority for acidulation and for direct use without
acidulation will largely make up for its lower grade, and as a mining
proposition it more nearly approaches a technical field of operation.
The blue rock field proper covers a territory bounded approximately by
a trapezoid having as its four corners Centreville, in Hickman County;
Kinderhook and Mt. Joy, in Maury County, and Lewis Monument, in Lewis
County. Traversing this territory are Duck River, Indian, Swan, Blue Buck
and Cathey’s creeks, and their tributaries, and outcropping along these
valleys and underlying the ridges between them are deposits of blue rock
running in bone phosphate from 60 per cent to 78 per cent, with less than
3 per cent iron and alumina, that will aggregate in the neighborhood of
40,000,000 tons.
This field will soon be developed by the extension of the Nashville,
Chattanooga & St. Louis branch up Swan Creek and the Louisville &
Nashville branch down Swan Creek, with side lines and spurs leading off
each, surveys for which have been made, and work on construction will
soon be under way.
If, however, the Florence Northern Railroad should ever be built from
Florence to Nashville it will run through the heart of this territory as
well as the magnificent iron deposits of Wayne and Lewis.
With the above road and a road from Huntsville on the southeast to Milan
on the northwest all of the phosphate territory would be fully developed,
and this section of Maury, Hickman, Lewis, Perry, Giles, Davidson and
Williamson counties would be the site of more fertilizer factories than
will be found elsewhere in the world in the same space.
Contributary to such prospective development is the present opening up of
pyrites deposits at Pyriton, near Talladega, Ala., with ore running two
to four units higher than the Virginia ores, and while from four to six
units lower than the best Spanish ores, it is much more free burning than
the latter, and with its advantage in freight rates, will likely give
manufacturers equally as good a product at a lower price.
The vein of pyrites is about one and one-half miles long and from four
to fifteen feet thick and has been exploited to a depth of 430 feet, the
ore improving in quality with the depth. It is reported by manufacturers
who have used it to be the freest burning pyrites ore known, leaving
only about ½ of 1 per cent of the sulphur in the cinder and containing
no deleterious ingredients. The deposits are controlled by the Alabama
Pyrites Company and the Southern Sulphur Ore Company, the latter owned by
Messrs. Carpenter & Howard, of Columbia, their vein running from eight to
fifteen feet thick. The railroad into this deposit has been built from
the Louisville & Nashville, at Talladega, a distance of twenty miles, at
a cost of nearly $400,000.
The consumption of fertilizers has increased 200 per cent in the United
States in the past twelve years, and while the visible supply of
phosphate rock is rapidly decreasing, the consumption of fertilizers
is almost as rapidly increasing, and with this fact in view, the large
fertilizer companies are and have been for several years gradually
buying up phosphate lands to provide themselves for the future. This
tendency has put a large amount of phosphate property in such strong
hands that little or no danger is possible of the old scramble to sell,
with its attendant low prices. At the same time, a considerable amount
of land valuable for its phosphate deposits is still uncontrolled by
manufacturers, so that a healthy competition in the business is still
open.
The amount of fertilizer used in Middle Tennessee is almost a minus
quantity, but this state of things cannot long exist. The horse worked
continuously without feeding soon dies, and so it will be, nay already
is, with much of our land in the “dimple of the universe.”
Farmers know that the crops of ten years ago cannot be raised to-day
and are all waking up to the fact that something is needed. The large
stock-raiser, who husbands his stable manure, can partially take care of
the thin spots on his land. But the small farmer, the backbone of the
country, whose acres do not afford him land sufficient to till and still
have the rich pastures necessary to raise much stock, contents himself
with simply wearing out his farm, selling it at a low price, generally
with the mediation of the sheriff, and moving elsewhere for better or
more probably for worse. To this class the use of fertilizer in Tennessee
is practically unknown, but their successors of the next few decades
will form, as is the case in other States, the bulk of the fertilizer
consumers, and when this comes to pass Tennessee will indeed have come
into her own.
The use of fertilizer in the cotton States has enabled the planters to
continue year after year to raise the enormous crops of cotton and has
also enabled them to diversify their crops by being able to produce the
same yield of cotton on a less number of acres.
So fertilizers will enable the Middle Tennessee farmers to raise the
same amount of feed on fewer acres, leaving more land to grow up to blue
grass, and our present greatly depreciated live stock interests will come
up by leaps and bounds until we will rival the famous blue grass section
of Kentucky, if we do not far outstrip it.
When one stops to consider (1) that the wheat crop alone annually
removes from the soil of the United States more phosphoric acid than
is the equivalent of twice the amount of phosphate rock produced in
the country; and (2) that over half of the amount mined is exported so
that the fertilizers used in the United States return to the soil only
one-fourth of the phosphoric acid that is taken away by the wheat crop
alone, without considering the other crops, we can readily see that the
consumption of fertilizer and phosphate rock not only will, but of right
ought to, enormously increase, and that the industry is a permanent
one that will last without cessation or danger of serious interruption
as long as the world eats bread. That it has been and still is being
developed almost entirely by outside capital is one of the features that
seems to attend the development of practically all the industries of the
State.
A complete analysis of a dry sample of average “brown rock,” which the
writer had made several years ago, may be of interest, and is as follows:
Moisture .87
Combined water and organic matter 1.53
Sand and insoluble matter 2.76
Peroxide of iron 2.40
Alumina 1.99
Lime 49.07
Magnesia .24
Carbonic acid 1.08
Equals carbonate of lime, 2.41.
Fluorine 2.98
Sulphuric acid 1.03
Phosphoric acid 35.62
Equals bone phosphate of lime, 77.78.
-----
Total 99.57
The rock which is exported from Tennessee goes to England, Scotland,
Ireland, Belgium, Holland, France, Spain, Italy, Austria and Japan. The
domestic rock is consumed by the various fertilizer factories all over
that part of the United States east of the Mississippi River, some of the
principal points being Philadelphia, Pa.; Buffalo, N. Y.; Cleveland and
Columbus, Ohio; Chicago, Ill.; Indianapolis, Ind.; Lynchburg, Staunton,
Norfolk and Richmond, Va.; Memphis, Nashville and Chattanooga, Tenn.;
Greenville, Columbia and Charleston, S. C.; Charlotte and Winston, N.
C.; Macon and Atlanta, Ga.; Meridian, Miss.; Birmingham, Montgomery and
Mobile, Ala.
In conclusion, a word might be appropriate on the subject of the direct
use of raw ground phosphate rock as a fertilizer, without acidulation.
The experiment stations of the great States of Illinois, Ohio,
Pennsylvania, Maryland and New Jersey have made exhaustive experiments
with this material, and their bulletins may be had by any farmer desiring
them, showing that this material has given results that prove it to be
more valuable for many soils than the acidulated phosphate. The great
State of Tennessee, on the other hand, without any practical experiments
to back it up, in the face of the opinions of some of its most eminent
chemists and experts, continues on its statute book an absolute
prohibition against the sale of this material within its borders.
Mr. Cyril Hopkins, of the Illinois Experiment Station, says that the
discovery of the Tennessee phosphate deposits is the greatest thing that
ever happened for the farmers of Illinois.
Each year many carloads of this material are shipped into other States
and wherever it has been used its use is spreading, yet these people have
to pay more in freight alone than it would cost the average Tennessee
farmer at his farm.
Immense deposits of this rock exist in Tennessee high enough in grade
to meet the requirements for direct use, and if this prohibition were
removed, almost every county seat in the sixth and seventh congressional
districts would have phosphate mills to supply the local trade, just as
they have flour mills.
The next Legislature should certainly correct the errors of the past by
allowing the Tennessee farmer to exercise the same amount of free agency,
common sense judgment as his fellows of the other States.
The principal mines in Tennessee are shown in the table on the following
page:
--------+---------------------------------------------------------+
| Operators. |
County. +---------------------------------------+-----------------+
| | |
| Name | Post Office |
--------+---------------------------------------+-----------------+
Davidson|Charleston, S. C., Mining and Mfg. Co. |Charleston, S. C.| 1
Hickman |American Cotton Oil Co. |New York | 2
Hickman |Jarecki Chemical Co. |Cincinnati, O. | 3
Hickman |Meridian Fertilizer Fac. |Meridian, Miss. | 4
Hickman |Rich & Hays Phos. Co. |Twomey | 5
Hickman |Rich & Hays Phos. Co. |Twomey | 6
Hickman |Swift & Co. |Chicago | 7
Hickman |Tenn. Blue Rock Phos. Co. |Mt. Pleasant | 8
Hickman |S. M. Ward Mining Co. |Centerville | 9
Maury |H. F. Alexander |Columbia |10
Maury |H. F. Alexander & Co. |Mt. Pleasant |11
Maury |Blue Grass Phos. Co. |Mt. Pleasant |12
Maury |Central Phosphate Co. |Mt. Pleasant |13
Maury |Central Phosphate Co. |Mt. Pleasant |14
Maury |Central Phosphate Co. |Mt. Pleasant |15
Maury |Central Phosphate Co. |Mt. Pleasant |16
Maury |Charleston, S. C., Mining and Mfg. Co. |Charleston, S. C.|17
Maury | ” ” ” |Charleston, S. C.|18
Maury | ” ” ” |Charleston, S. C.|19
Maury | ” ” ” |Charleston, S. C.|20
Maury |Columbian Phos. Co. |Mt. Pleasant |21
Maury |H. B. Battle |Winston, N. C. |22
Maury |Federal Chemical Co. |Louisville, Ky. |23
Maury |International Phos. Co. |Columbia |24
Maury |International Phos. Co. |Columbia |25
Maury |Maury Phos. Co. |Mt. Pleasant |26
Maury |Petrified Bone Min. Co |Mt. Pleasant |27
Maury |Swift & Co. |Chicago, Ill. |28
Maury |Tenn. Chemical Co. |Nashville |29
Sumner |Buffalo Fertilizer Co. |Buffalo, N. Y. |30
Sumner |Smith Agr. Chem. Co. |Columbus, O. |31
Sumner |Swift & Co. |Chicago, Ill. |32
Maury |France & Co. |Mt. Pleasant |33
Maury |Ruhm & Barrow |Mt. Pleasant |34
Hickman |N. Y. & St. L. Min. & Mfg. Co. |Aetna, Tenn |35
Maury |Globe Phos. Co. |Mt. Pleasant |36
Maury |Century Phos. Co. |Mt. Pleasant |37
Maury |Southport Phos. Co. |Mt. Pleasant |38
Hickman |Amer. Cot. Oil Co. |New York |39
Lewis |Big Swan Phos. Co. |Mt. Pleasant |40
Hickman |Ruhm & Wheeler |Mt. Pleasant |41
Hickman |Killebrew, Ruhm & Co. |Mt. Pleasant |42
Perry |Perry Phos. Co. |Columbia |43
Decatur |Beech River Phos. Co. |Nashville |44
Lewis |Charleston M. & Mfg. Co. |Mt. Pleasant |45
--------+---------------------------------------+-----------------+
+-----------------+-------------------+-------------
| | Holdings. | Character of
| Name of Tract +-----------+-------+ mining:
| or Mine | How |No. of | Underground
| | Held | Acres | or surface.
+-----------------+-----------+-------+-------------
1| Caldwell | Fee | 65 | Surface.
2| Gregory | Fee | 125 | Both.
3| Ratliff | Fee | 300 | Both.
4| Laverick | Fee | 2,280 | Under’gr’d.
5| Brown | Fee | 50 | Surface.
6| Wiss | Lease | 40 | Both.
7| Eason | Fee | 60 | Both.
8| Fogg | Lease | 200 | Under’gr’d.
9| McGill | Lease | 500 | Both.
10| Jameson | | | Surface.
11| Mt. Pleasant | | | Surface.
12| Blue Grass | Lease | 1,000 | Surface.
13| Dawson | | | Surface.
14| Kittrell | Lease | 125 | Surface.
15| Harris | | | Surface.
16| Long | Fee | 140 | Surface.
17| Arrow | Fee | 690 | Surface.
18| Howard | Fee | 182 | Surface.
19| McMeen | Fee | 540 | Surface.
20| Ridley | Fee | 319 | Surface.
21| Columbian | Fee | 60 | Surface.
22| Battle | Fee | 84 | Surface.
23| Tenn. Phos. Co. | Fee | 1,200 | Surface.
24| Solita | Fee | 110 | Surface.
25| Satterfield | Fee | 275 | Surface.
26| Moore | Fee | 264 | Surface.
27| Petrified | Fee | 220 | Surface.
28| Bailey | Lease | 361 | Surface.
29| Douglass | Fee | 250 | Surface.
30| Watkins | Fee | 250 | Surface.
31| Sumner Phos. Co.| Fee | 1,500 | Surface.
32| Guthrie | Fee | 321 | Surface.
33| Goodloe | Fee | 40 | Surface.
34| Sedberry | Fee | 130 | Surface.
35| Peery | Fee | 7,000 | Under’gr’d.
36| American | Fee | 2,500 | Surface.
37| Harlan |Lease & Fee| 1,000 | Surface.
38| Southport | Fee | 943 | Surface.
39| Gilmer | Fee | 200 | Both.
40| Walker | Fee | 600 | Under’gr’d.
41| Harvill | Fee | 736 | Under’gr’d.
42| Rochell | Fee | 541 | Both.
43| Tom’s Creek | Fee | 500 | Under’gr’d.
44| Parsons | Fee | 1,000 | Surface.
45| Mayfield | Fee | 500 | Under’gr’d.
--+-----------------+-----------+-------+-------------