sis of the ore made by J. B. Britton and quoted by Putnam gave Franklin and Clinton mines. With the sloping of the surface toward the Oriskany valley, the ore beds beyond the Ellingwood opening come out just east of Clinton in a northeast-southwest course at about the 700 foot contour, as shown on the topographic sheet. A iarge quantity of ore has been removed here by open cutting, the excavations extending nearly a mile on the outcrop, with a width of several hundred feet in places. These workings date back many years. For the last 25 years or more the ore has been mined underground. Altogether an area of about 200 acres has been worked over by mining or stripping, and the ore product must amount to nearly 2,000,000 tons. The Franklin and Clinton mines are a part of the ore properties owned by the Franklin Iron Manufacturing Co. and have always been operated in connection with the company's furnace at Franklin Springs, 2 miles south of Clinton. They are entered by adit levels. that follow the main ore bed in an easterly and southeasterly direction. The advancing long-wall system of mining is employed. From 18 to 24 inches of overlying shale is blasted down with the ore to gain sufficient room for the miners to work. The ore is trammed on cars, holding a little more than a ton, to a loading platform near the mine and is then run over a spur to the Ontario & Western Railroad for shipment to the furnace. Since the rebuilding of the Franklin furnace in 1880 the mines have been intermittently active, producing about 60,000 tons a year when operated. They were closed down last in November 1907, after a campaign of two years. The exposures of the Clinton strata at this locality have much interest, as indeed they afford one of the best sections of the formation in eastern New York. The following is the succession as given by C. H. Smyth jr.1 The red flux bed reaches its greatest thickness at this point. The oolitic ore alone is mined. The existence of two oolitic beds in the Clinton section has been generally accepted as a normal condition, but this is not the case. There is convincing evidence to show that the lower seam represents nothing more than a split in the main bed due to a thickening locally of the shale or sandstone parting that is nearly everywhere present. There are few places where the two beds are more than a few inches apart. As a rule the ore in this vicinity really measures from 30 to 36 inches, that is the combined thickness of the two beds, and it has been the recent practice to extract the entire oolitic ore without reference to the intervening rock layer. The composition of the oolitic ore at this locality is shown by the following analyses. 1 J. F. Kemp. Ore Deposits of the United States. 1896. p. 104. |