Mining
Mount Pleasant has a long history of exploration and development in mining. Tin was first discovered on the mountain in 1937. The focus of exploration over the years has shifted from tin-base metals to porphyry tungsten-molybdenum-bismuth deposits, and then to porphyry tin deposits, and now indium, a rare element that is important to new technologies such as LCD screens and solar cells, computers and smart phones.
The Mount Pleasant mine is located 80 km (50 mi) south of Fredericton, the provincial capital. The mining company Adex Mining Inc. holds 102 prospective claims covering approximately 1,600 hectares (4,000 acres) and 405 hectares (1,000 acres) of surface rights at Mount Pleasant, dominating the local extraction rights. It is situate close to infrastructure and potential employees. With a population of 50,000, Fredericton is important to the mine, as is Saint John, with a population of 70,000, which lies about 80 km (50 mi) o the southeast. Mount Pleasant is also only 65 km (40 mi) from the Canada – United States border. When the mine was last producing - 1983 to 1985 - tungsten ore was regularly transported through Saint John by means of a provincial highway for shipment to Europe. The mine site is accessible via all-weather roads from Fredericton, Saint John and St. George. Electricity is provided by the New Brunswick transmission grid and water from a pump house located on the nearby Piskahegan River.
On September 25, 2005, the Society of Economic Geologists hosted a small field trip to the caldera and the nearby Mount Pleasant Mine and Clarence stream deposit. The trip was divided into three stages: the Mount Pleasant Caldera, the Mount Pleasant Mine, and the Clarence Stream deposits. The field crew described two trenches that seemed to outline the relationship between the volcanic rock and the possibly gold-rich intrusive areas.
On June 25, 2008, Geodex Minerals Ltd., a gold venture firm, announced the results of a 2007 - early 2008 diamond drilling program on the west side of Mount Pleasant. Along with the development of the Sisson Brook tungsten-molybdenum-copper project north of Fredericton, the area surrounding the former Mount Pleasant mine has been a major focus of the company. Research is ongoing, and focuses on the two most likely candidates: the McDougall Brook Granitic suite (MBG) and the Mount Pleasant Granitic suite (MPG). In June 2011, the owners moved their corporate offices from Toronto to Fredericton with the intent of refocusing efforts onto getting the mine running again by 2012.
Read more about this topic: Mount Pleasant Caldera
Famous quotes containing the word mining:
“Any relation to the land, the habit of tilling it, or mining it, or even hunting on it, generates the feeling of patriotism. He who keeps shop on it, or he who merely uses it as a support to his desk and ledger, or to his manufactory, values it less.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish or a German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making “ladies” dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase.”
—Stephanie Coontz (20th century)
“It’s a mining town in lotus land.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)