Rich Knob prospect, Rich Knob, Towns County, Georgia, USAi

Regional Level Types
Rich Knob prospect	Prospect
Rich Knob	Hill
Towns County	County
Georgia	State
USA	Country

There is a copper prospect, owned by J. Miles Berrong, of Hiwassee, on lot 91, 1st district, Towns County, originally Rabun. It is at the head of Hightower Creek, on the south slope of Rich Knob, 10 miles east-northeast of Hiwassee.

The first prospect is a pit at an altitude of 3200 feet. Some boulders of vein material were dug out, but the vein in place is not exposed. At the southeast (foot wall side) are exposures of quartz-mica gneiss, striking northeast and dipping northwest at a low angle. Northwest of the pit are masses of fine-grained hornblendite. The vein material is a quartz-biotite rock with red garnets as large as half an inch in diameter. The texture is coarsely granitic or finely pegmatitic. A green copper-bearing mineral, probably chrysocolla, forms thin coatings around the other mineral grains and fills irregular fractures in the garnet crystals. A sample from the greenest material showed 1.49 per cent copper, and no silver.

There is a better exposure, evidently of the same vein, in a bluff two-fifths of a mile northeast of and 520 feet above the pit. The pegmatitic vein consists of quartz, biotite, garnet, and feldspar (?), showing some copper stain, but not nearly so much as the boulders from the lower pit. Analysis of a sample collected by J. E. Brantly showed 0.12 per cent copper.

The main vein is from 12 to 18 feet thick. It strikes northeast and dips about 45°NW., almost conformable with the schistosity of the country rock, but tongues and stringers of vein matter extend into the country rock, sometimes directly across the schistosity. The hanging wall is fine-grained hornblende gneiss, the foot wall fine-grained quartz-mica gneiss. The "vein" is evidently a dike intruded along the contact, probably after the last great period of metamorphism, but still at considerable depth.

The source of the copper mineral is doubtful. It is of secondary character, filling openings between, and fractures in, the grains of other minerals. No pyrite, chalcopyrite, nor even iron stain could be found, and the rock is too tight ever to have contained much sulphide. If the deposit proves to be workable it will be strictly a copper, not a sulphur, mine. The inaccessible location and low grade of all ore in sight renders work in the near future very improbable.