Smith

Location: New York, United States (44.108, -73.526 approx.)

Commodities: iron; thorium; uranium; phosphorus; rare earth elements

Deposit model: iron oxide-apatite · low Ti-Fe-oxide, Cu-Au-U-REE

Geology

The Smith mine is accessible from the Fisher Hill mine through the Fisher Hill-Smith mine crosscut. Several hundred feet of the left and right branches of the cross cut were tested for radioactivity. All parts of the underground workings were about as radioactive (averaging about 0.10 mr per hr) as workings in the Old Bed. Parts of the dump were radioactive; a few pieces of ore gave readings as high as 0.17 mr per hr. Green apatite is more common in the ore on the dump of the Smith mine than in Old Bed ore; otherwise the two ores are about the same mineralogically. Further, analyses (FK3-48A, -49A, tables 1 and 2) show that the same elements are present in the two ores in about the same quantities. Because of the mineralogic similarity and certain interpretations of the complex structure of the Old Bed and Smith mine magnetite bodies, Republic Steel Corp. geologists (oral communication, E. F. Fitzhugh) have considered the possibility that these two ore bodies are part of the same deposit. Similar trace-element contents of these ore bodies also tend to support this hypothesis. (McKeown and Klemic (1956))

Exploration and site history

• Inactive — The Smith Orebody has been mined out, 1980 (Staatz and others (1980))

Record imported from USGS USMIN ver. 4.0 (June 2019). Developments after that date appear on facility records, not here; see the methodology.