Locating the old mine sites situated throughout Western North Carolina can be both entertaining and informative. The abundance of minerals and other commodities made the extractive industries an important factor in the region’s economy during the 20th century. When the agriculture declined, these industries were there to provide work for farmers.

A good concise account of mining in the general area of Jackson county is provided by Western Carolina University history professor John L. Bell in the chapter titled “Economic Activities” in The History of Jackson County (1987), which was edited by Max R. Williams. Bell notes that the most profitable item was kaolin. Mica was the second most profitable mineral. Olivine was also an economic factor. Other materials that were extracted were gold, copper, nickel, talc, feldspar, and vermiculite. The gemstone industry — rubies, sapphires and garnets — still flourishes as a tourist attraction, primarily in Macon County. For whatever reason, I have always been interested in the old corundum (ka-run-dam) mines. According to F.H. Pugh’s entry in A Field Guide to Rocks and Minerals (1988), corundum is an oxide “common in crystals in plutonic, pegmatite, and metamorphic rocks .... The U.S. occurrences are as large crystals and masses in Georgia and North Carolina, together with a few rubies and sapphires.” Pugh also cites other locations in the U.S. The rubies and sapphires associated with corundum lead rockhounds to the old mine sites. Corundum’s primary use was as an industrial abrasive and refractory. Grinding stones (emery wheels) are made from corundum because it is, according to Pugh, “harder than any other natural mineral except diamond.” You wouldn’t use diamonds to make a grindstone, would you?

But corundum is readily available and almost as hard. Emery boards are used for filing your fingernails. And you use emery cloth as a fine abrasive. Bell notes that corundum mining flourished in Jackson County in the 1890s, primarily around Sapphire and Cullowhee. “The Hamlin and Fordyce Corundum Company built a factory at Cullowhee that manufactured the first corundum wheel in the South on August 17, 1892. Also in 1892 the New York Corundum Company (NYCC) bought Gen. E.R. Hampton’s grist and saw mill in Sylva and converted it to the manufacture of emery wheels.
Capitalized at $150,000 and directed by Hoffman, the Western North Carolina Corundum Wheel Company, a subsidiary of NYCC, began production in 1894 as F.P. Pressley brought the first load of corundum from his mine in Cullowhee.”

Perhaps the only site in Western North Carolina that looks like a Mayan ruin is situated high on the steep, north face of Sugarloaf Mountain at 3,600 feet. Known as Ruby City, it rises in a series of six walled terraces, with a carefully crafted main entranceway and narrow corridors. If it was located in Mexico or Central America, you might conclude that it was an ancient temple of some sort.

Ruby City was, in fact, the location of one of Jackson County’s most profitable corundum mines. Just when Ruby City was first located and mined is not clear. According to Bell, it was being mined in the early 1920s by a Col. S.A. Jones, who organized the Consolidated Abrasive Mining Co. The lease was subsequently purchased by The Rhodolite Corporation of New York. Maps of the area indicate Ruby City was located on Sugarloaf Mountain between Sylva and Balsam Gap two miles south of present U.S. 74 at the end of state road 1707. This state road is named Sugarloaf Road on the street sign alongside U.S. 74. The state road now terminates at a gate. The property beyond is part of Balsam Mountain Perserve, a private development where 350 homes will eventually be built.

About 10 years ago I talked with local residents about Ruby City. According to Jackson County native Clyde Norman, whose father Sam (now deceased) worked at Ruby City, the corundum mined there was used in whetstones and abrasives. The crushed ore was hauled in horse-drawn wagons from the mine down to the rail siding at Willetts. Norman, who was a boy when the mine was being operated in the 1920s, still remembers the sight of the team of four huge horses that pulled the ore wagon. Demonstrating an admirable memory, he recalls that “Frank” and “Wheeler” were 1,400-pound horses, while “Mack” and “Sport” were mere 1,200-pounders. His father carried the mail (first on horseback and later by automobile) from Willetts up to the mine where he oiled machinery and performed other tasks. A boarding house with a resident cook was maintained at the site for the mining crew, which numbered 25 to 30 workers in Ruby City’s heyday. George Crawford, from Cullowhee, was “blowed up with dynamite” at Ruby City, Norman recalled. By the early 1930s, Ruby City had closed down, with only a caretaker living there to watch after the equipment. Today, even on a bright day, sunlight never shines directly on the dark side of Sugarloaf Mountain where men and horses once labored mightily. In summer, the forest that has reclaimed Ruby City casts the walled terraces in deep shade. It may not be an ancient Mayan ruin, but it’s one of the most striking and haunting historical sites in WNC.

(George Ellison is a writer who lives in Bryson City. He wrote the biographical introductions for the reissues of two Appalachian classics: Horace Kephart’s Our Southern Highlanders and James Mooney’s History, Myths, and Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees. Readers can contact him at P.O. Box 1262, Bryson City, N.C., 287713, or at ellisongeorge@cs.com.)

 

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