Mining in New England?

[ralph124c]

To geologists: New England is an area of extremely old bedrocks and mountains-the White and Green Mountans are >400 million years old. as such they have eroded greatly. Is it likely that NE is a good place to look for metal ores, raw materials?
In the past, NE had some mining-copper was mined in Vermont, till about 1950. Western MA had a few small iron mines (Goshen area), and cola mining in Mansfield. Even RI had some small coal mining.
My question: with the big runup in commdity prices, is it likely that mining will revive in NE?

[bouv]

It would be a bitch to do. Vermonters and New Hampshirites (is that the proper term?) love their nature and pristine mountains. Any company trying to come in and start diggin’ big ol’ holes is in for YEARS of paperwork, legislation, protests, etc…It really wouldn’t be worth their time or money, methinks.

[Little_Nemo]

I know that northern New York (which is essentially the western end of New England) used to have a good-sized iron mining industry. My understanding is that it eventually closed up because the easily accessible ore was used up and other areas offered better commercial possibilities.

[Fear_Itself]

There is gold in New Hampshire, but it is hard to recover:

No really important gold production has ever been recorded in [New Hampshire] even though mining interest began in colonial times. The potential does, however, exist for the discovery of major gold reserves within the context of modern gold genetic models and the application resource analysis technology.

Anomalous occurrences of gold in New Hampshire were well documented by the middle 1800s (see Suggestions for Additional Reading). Gold had been identified in placer deposits, quartz veins, and in metamorphosed conglomerate, especially the Clough Formation in the western side of the state. The best known deposits were described by C.H. Hitchcock in 1878 who established the Ammonoosuc Gold District centered on Lyman, Monroe, and Bath, including southwestern Littleton, northwestern Landaff, and western Lisbon.

The first discoveries were made in the Ammonoosuc in 1864 when several small mines were opened which supported two milling operations. About $50,000 worth of gold (at period value) was shipped to the Philadelphia National Mint before economic circumstances closed operations in 1878. A much smaller amount of gold was also shipped to the mint from the Diamond Ledge Mine in Ossipee. Gold in the Ammonoosuc District is found in veins with sulfide minerals such as pyrite, as “free” gold in quartz veins, and dispersed in sheared chloritic schist or chromiferous, carbonate rock. Streams draining into the Connecticut River, especially from the confluence of the Ammonoosuc River at Woodsville north to the Connecticut Lakes, are all favorable for finding gold in placer deposits. The Baker River, draining into the Merrimack River is also reported as favorable for detrital gold. The gold in placer deposits ranges in grain size from very fine to sparse nuggets up to pearl size. In truth, arduous work can probably produce traces of gold from almost any stream in the state.

[ralph124c]

A few years ago, a mining company applied for a license to explore the White Mountains, to find uranium deposits-never heard any more about it. The coal deposits intrigue me-apparently, SE NE has large deposits of high-quality anthracite coal.