I teach a good many Elderhostels each year at sites in Western North Carolina and north Georgia. These events draw folks from across North America who want to visit this region. Most participants are retired professionals from all walks of life. They tend to be well read and thoughtful. Many have held the very highest positions in their chosen professions ... biology, government, industry, anthropology, geology, journalism, agriculture, whatever. Over the long haul, I learn more from them than they could ever hope to learn from me.

This is a roundabout way of telling you why I know more about mica than you might have guessed. Whenever I have these groups out for a little nature walk, someone will invariably ask, “Oh, what is that shiny stuff in the rocks?”

Invariably, someone in the group will reply, “That’s mica.”

I will then observe that the earliest Indians and later the Cherokees mined mica for ornamental purposes, and that it was one of the great Cherokee trade items. Then I will add that it has been systematically mined here in WNC for a century and a half at least, and that it is still mined commercially, especially in the Spruce Pine area north of Asheville.

That’s about as much as I knew about mica 10 years or so ago when I first started teaching Elderhostels. But through the years, various participants have added what they know to the discussion. So now I know right much about the subject. Just enough to be dangerous. If you casually inquire, “What’s that shiny stuff in the rocks?” you may get more in the way of an answer than you really want. Here we go.

Mica is a generic term that applies to a group of complex aluminosilicate minerals that have a sheet or plate-like structure with different chemical compositions and physical properties. All micas form flat six-sided crystals with cleavage parallel to the direction of the large surfaces, which permits them to be split into optically flat films. Muscovite micas, which are colorless to pale green and ruby in color, are more easily split than others. Mica, principally muscovite, is widely used for industrial applications because of its exceptional physical, chemical, electrical, thermal and mechanical properties.

Sheet mica refers to books of mica either mined from hard rock or from loosely consolidated clay-like material formed from weathering. These books can be readily split into thin film or splittings with specific thicknesses.

Quality sheet mica is graded into 10 quality classifications. Books of mica that are flawed with excess inclusions, cracks or folds are called scrap mica and are either ground into commercial products by a dry or wet process.

The name mica is derived from the Latin word micare, which means “to shine or glitter.” The word muscovite was derived from Muscovia, the district in Russia where the mineral was first found and identified in 1609.

Evidence indicates that the ancient Hindus mined mica as early as 2000 B.C. for use in medicine, window glazing, for decorative purposes and as a surface for painting mythological scenes. They believed that mica crystals were preserved lighting flashes.

The use of mica in North America by the American Indians of the Southern Appalachian region as an ornamentation at grave sites can be traced back for many centuries. The Cherokees also used the material as a medium of exchange, so that mica from this region has been found throughout eastern North America. In return the Cherokees received shells, copper, suitable stones for spear points and numerous other commodities.

The Peabody Museum in Massachusetts has a beautiful serpent carved from such trade mica (www.peabody.harvard.edu/ conservation/snakes.html). This effigy was unearthed years ago at the Turner Mound in Hamilton County, Ohio. It is described (www.peabody.harvard.edu/conservation/mica.html) as follows:


“The serpent is made from what has been identified as muscovite mica and measures 25.8 x 34.2 cm; the width of the body varies from 5.2 to 7.5 cm. Measuring an average of 0.19 cm in thickness, the upper portion is nearly twice as thick as the lower portion, which measures an average of 0.05 and 0.07 cm. The method of manufacture of mica cut-outs is uncertain. The edges are very clean and smoothly cut. It is possible that obsidian, flint, or chert blades were used since these were recovered in abundance from the Turner Mound site. The mica surface is scored with shallow decorative incision marks in the location of the serpent’s head. These marks have been interpreted as stylized horns; the horned serpent being an important deity. Many representations of the horned serpent in different materials have been found at Turner and other mound sites. The cut-out was assembled from a total of 12 mica fragments; the lower half being the most fragmented and composed of nine sections after the second bend.”


In other words, the native Americans were very meticulous craftsmen when it came to crafting mica ornamentals. It was the material of choice throughout eastern North America for centuries - and the Cherokees had prospecting rights.

Before mica mining became a multi-billion dollar industrial enterprise here in WNC, it was a cottage industry. In The French Broad (1965), one of my favorite books, Wilma Dykeman, one of my favorite people, describes those days: “A large part of this mining is done in small operations - ‘groundhog holes,’ the local people call them, penetrating the sides of hill after hill in these counties (Mitchell, Yancey and parts of Avery), and the raw wound of many an abandoned digging gapes on the mountainside, giving the country an appearance different from the rest of the French Broad watershed.”

She notes that it was during the post-Civil War era - “when a northern traveler happened to see a large sheet of ‘isinglass’ in one of the cabins, where he stopped overnight” - that the sheet-mica business was initiated, thereby supplying “practically all of the isinglass used in the old-fashioned stove windows in this country or Canada.” Big sheets of mica used for cabin or store windows were called isinglass. Smaller pieces were also crafted into kerosene lamp chimneys.

The center of mica production has traditionally been in the Spruce Pine area, but there were also extensive mines in Jackson and Macon counties. In The History of Jackson Country (1987), John L. Bell notes that mica deposits were first discovered “on the road between Webster and Franklin” in 1858. These were displayed at the South Carolina State Fair in 1866. As recently as the early 1940s, “the defense needs of World War II caused a boom in mica,” then it became very “important in the production of electronic vacuum tubes.”

Ninety-four mines were opened in 1942, but “only 30 were operating in 1943 because of the manpower shortage. Nevertheless, “these mines produced 94,943 pounds of sheet and 183,00 pounds of scrap mica, useful in the manufacture of tires and innertubes. The largest operations were at the Buchanan, Big East Fork, Jasper, Frady, Engle, Cope, Kolb, Tilley, and Stillwell mines.” According to Bell, mica mining ceased about 1962.

Some of the applications for mica today would be as microwave windows; condensers and transformers, resistance cards and vacuum tubes; computer parts; heat endurance components of guided missiles; the heart of a CAT scan is a piece of high quality mica coated with gold; molding plate is also fabricated into tubes and rings for insulation in transformers, armatures, and motor starters; coating for roof shingles and cement blocks; paint and rubber additives; and so on ad infinitum.

You get the picture. Mica has been one of the prime factors in the economic health of this region for centuries. In 1540, De Soto came looking for gold and found very little, when he should have been thinking mica.

(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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