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Show NEVADA HAS LARGE IGiSITE DEPOSIT Valuable Source of Material Ma-terial Discovered by Official Offi-cial Survey. A massive deposit of magrneeite of tin-usual tin-usual character that has recently been brought to the attention of the United States geological survey promises to yield a large p.nd readily available supply of this material. The deposit lies in Clark county, Nevada, in the valley of Muddy river, one of the tributaries of Virgin creek, a few miles above the town of St. Thomas. The material has been known for ?orne time as kaolin and successful suc-cessful experiments for utilizing it aa a porcelain olay are reported to have been ! made, though they have not yet resulted in the exploitation of the deposit. The recognized outcrops have been located as mining claims nnd some preliminary ex-ploraiion ex-ploraiion and development work, has been done. A sidetrack on the St. Thomas branch of the San Pedro, Los Angeles & Salt Lake railroad, about t hree miles northeast of the northernmost group of claims, offers a readily available railroad rail-road connection and the station has been named Kaolin, from this deposit. By far the greater part of the mag-nesite mag-nesite produced In the "United States is consumed in calcined form as a digester for wood pulp in paper manufacture. Some, however. Is useel in making plastic material for flooring, tiles, wainscoting, artificial marble, paint and fireproofing. The so-called Kaolin is stated by the geological eurvey to be in fact a mag-nesite mag-nesite and wsp deposited In a highly magnesian sedimentary bed, a part of a regularly stratified series of sedimentary sedimen-tary strata exposed by Ft ream channels that rut across a low ridge at the upper edge of Muddy valley. The deposit forms a chalky-looking bluff, dazzlingly white in the bright sunlight. The material is porcelain-white, fine graJned and massive, is remarkably free from foreign material and has the structureless appearance ami conchoida 1 fracture that genera 11 v characteristic of mngneslte. It is not fo hard a the more typb-al magneslte and It crumbles moro rapldtv on exposure to the weather. The deposit is included between tilted beds of conglomerate nnd sandstone below be-low and hale above. The lower contact is sharply defined, but the magnetite grades off into the overlying heds. The purer part of the deposit consists of beds aggregating at least 200 feet in thickness. thick-ness. Within the section of purer material ma-terial ther are a few bandB of sandy matter, but these are minor In amount and apparently almost necHgible, as they could undoubtedly be avoided In mining. The whole section lies in the form of a "hon-baek" that Is. the softer beds iap up against a uniform slope of the sandstone sand-stone aihi ronclomerate, that has a northeasterly north-easterly dip of "0 degree to 50 degreep. The region In whirh the deposit lies is In large part covered with diluvial wash, which eoneoals most of the bedrock formations, for-mations, so that the section including the macmesite Is expoped at only a few plRcep, where streams have cut down throiiLrli the overlying deposits. The regii-lariiy regii-lariiy of (he exposed section and the continuity- of the harder hds. which project through the surface wash, justify the assumption that the magupsite Is practically prac-tically continuous between exposures and for considerable distances beyond. Its length at the surface seems to be a mile at least. Unlike most other deposits of manesMe In California and elsewhere In this country, coun-try, this is not a vein deposit, such as occurs with serpentine. but resembles closely the deposits discovered in l'll I at Hlssell sidlnc. near Mohave. Oil., both being interhedded with san.iHtone and shale and of sedimentary origin. The deposit de-posit at Blpsell, however, dues not appear to be so large or regular as the deposit on Muddv river. Samples of this material were noticed In a mineral cabinet at Las Veras, Nov., last August by a geologist of the survey, who then recocnized the material as probahl y macnesi t e, t hough he was informed in-formed that it was kaolin. Later he vds-1 vds-1 1 ed the deposit In c run nan y with one of the claimants and was then Informed that analyses made in S ilt Lake City showed that It was matrnesite. So far as known, however, no special I rn pi -nance had been attached to this fact, as the material was iben helnc exploited at the Panama-Pacific exposition In San Francisco under the name of kaolin. The new deposits are so larce and so rendlly accessible that they may form a valuable source of magnetite. |
