Cox property, Ball Ground, Ball Ground Mining District, Cherokee County, Georgia, USAi

Regional Level Types
Cox property	Property
Ball Ground	Town
Ball Ground Mining District	Mining District
Cherokee County	County
Georgia	State
USA	Country

Mrs. Emnia A. Cox owns the talc on lot 305, 4th district and 2nd section of Cherokee County This lot is located on Sharp Mountain Creek, 2 1/2 miles west of Ball Ground, the nearest station on the Louisville and Nashville Railroad.

The talc outcrops on the west side of the creek for a distance of 1,400 feet, on a gently sloping ridge. And while the surface water drains off freely, the upper level of ground water comes close to the surface, thus interfering seriously with mining operations.

Since the discovery of talc on this lot many years ago by Mrs. Cox, numerous attempts have been made to develop the property, and much money has been spent here in prospecting, with little or no success. A small lense near the surface, probably 18 inches in thickness, seemed to give promise of an extensive deposit. This lense was worked out and all attempts to locate others of workable size have been failures, although a thin seam of talc is continuous over a considerable area.

Talc has been found to outcrop for a distance of 1,400 feet in the direction, N. 76° E., and to dip to the east at about the angle of 28°. The talc occurs in lense-shaped masses associated usually with a narrow bed of white quartzite, which, however, is absent at places. In the absence of the quartzite the talc is found in mica schist. When present, the quartzite commonly overlies the talc, but at one place it was seen to occur between two layers of talc. From the work that has been done the talc vein appears to run, with minor irregularities, in a uniform direction, and to dip with the schistosity of the rocks. At the dozen or more openings where the talc vein has been exposed, it is seen to vary in thickness from an inch or fraction of an inch up to a foot, but usually it is thin and less than 6 inches.

A number of large open cuts and drifts have been made, as well as one deep shaft and several smaller ones. The deepest shaft was sunk 126 feet through biotite gneiss without encountering anything but a talcose streak, although it must have cut through the horizon of the talc vein which outcrops somewhat farther west. No drifts were made from this shaft. A tunnel was driven on a level in the bottom of a small depression, following the talc vein along the strike for the distance of more than 400 feet. Within that distance no commercial talc was encountered, and the vein gave little promise of improving; consequently the work was abandoned.

The talc is pure white and contains little or no grit or other impurities. It is opaque and slightly schistose, but sufficiently massive for making pencils, etc.