One of America's Most Significant Mines - Unimin - Spruce Pine NC
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- čas přidán 16. 01. 2015
- Perhaps the highest grade quartz silica in the world is mined in Spruce Pine NC. This raw material is fabricated for semiconductors, computer chips, solar cells, quartz lighting and other uses. Feldspar from the same mines is used for ceramics, electrical porcelain and glass and fiber insulation. I shot my video clips from Spruce Pine Memorial Cemetery on Burleson Hill.
I use to live on pine mountain. And we use to swim in that green water. We called it the water hole. The water is powerful, I’ve been struck by lightning 3 times and it hurts the lightning more than me. That is a magical place...every one use to call me a flat lander.
I too was raised in Spruce Pine , My dad worked in the spar mill at Minpro , My grand dad run a Mica house on the Chalk highway , all this back in late 40`s . I have always been interested in Mitchell cty. & it`s minerals . Thank you for this great article!!!
Thanks Dorothy. My grandmother was a Mace.
I have been to this mine back in the 1990s. I live in Canton, Ohio and I was a long hall truck driver back then. I drove for a trucking company in Akron, Ohio and they had me down there making a delivery somewhere in the Carolinas. I needed a load to get back home and they sent me to this silica mine in Spruce Pine. The road up to the mine was a very winding road that really wasn't meant for a semi. I was pulling a 53 foot trailer, and my truck took up the entire width of the road on the way up there and back down. They loaded me up with barrels of silica sand and I took the sand back to Willoughby Ohio to a General Electric plant where they used the silica sand to make glass light bulbs.
This is probably the most important mine on the planet. Almost all semiconductor quartz comes from there. There are only a few other smaller deposits. From this mine, the US can control who can make semiconductors. Back in the 1940's they used only take the feldspar, the quartz was a waste material. Not anymore, the quartz sells for over $50,000 a ton. The process of purifying it us a closely guarded secret.
What a great mine tour! I'm a Rock Hound and I've been to some of the mines to find semi-precious stones.... back in the late 50's and during the 60's. My husband is from Asheville and my family moved there in the late 50s. This was certainly an exciting trip in to the heart of the earth and great information about the quartz & feldspar, etc. and how they're used in industry. Thanks for posting!
Really appreciate your comment Peggy. Cool to have a true rock hound checking in!
Tony Lee Glenn Also enjoyed your tour of the Dulcimer store in Black Mt. since I play the dulcimer and I know Tom Fellenbaum, and your tour between Barnardsville and Spruce Pine. (I think that was you.)
Very interesting video Tony - never saw this one befor.
I worked for an Asheville engineering firm in the 80's that had this mine as a client. Mostly erosion control design and permitting stuff. I got to digitize or trace electronically the huge topo maps the mine co provided us. My digitizer was 36" x 48". Several visits to the mine and hiked it from bottom to top. Cool stuff. Thanks for the memories.
Really appreciate you watching and commenting Andy. I’ll bet that was a great experience for sure.
@@tonyleeglenn hey thanks. I also remember one of the (Canadian) managers showing us a broken piece of a quartz glass crucible he said was used to melt silicone in to make computer chips. He also said they had searched worldwide for clean quartz and nothing compared to the purity of that found in this area. There’s what appears to be a pond way up on top but was told it’s an abandoned shaft that goes down to the level of the Toe River. Not sure how it was still holding water if that were true. We also worked for feldspar miners in Kings Mtn. where most of the product went to Koehler toilets made in NJ.
@@AndyFeinstein Would be awesome to interview you about your remembrances Andy. Let me know if we might be able to do that online, etc.
I live in Burnsville up on cattail. Love it!! Great video and I know exactly where that's at
Fascinating! Have you done any more videos there at Unimin?
Wow what an interesting video..and what an amazing place.. I really like the use of google maps in your video Tony, thats something I could use to show everyone a bit more of the area that I live and shoot video.. I have thought about using Google Maps for for directions A-B on my driving videos but this seems a much better use.
In January 1979 I was doing some exploritory drilling for large mining company just north of Spruce Pine. I met some very feiendly people there as I stayed in Spruce Pine for 4 months. I remember one man in particular Mr. Ray Wiseman. I would love to go back and visit this town again.
Watt is amazing is that if you came back and visited not much would have changed. It’s almost a timeless little region up there.
Cool Video Tony, interesting information you presented and you did a great job. If you do get a chance to go in there, I know you'll share with us. I'm interested in geology myself, unfortunately it's from afar lol...
It is the most important mine in the world now.
Very cool! thanks for sharing! Do you know anything about 360 video? I guess youtube will support 360 video in the coming weeks. But does my Adobe software allow me to create 360 video? I found ways to use my GoPro cameras to film 360, just not sure how to edit it.
I haven't done 360 degree video, but I have done sort of wrap around video with three GoPros. See these videos: czcams.com/video/ZZ-LQGnLy2c/video.html - and here's how I do this sort of video in Premiere Pro CC 2014 - czcams.com/video/0IJ1MScQjy8/video.html
Tony Lee Glenn
Well it looks like you could use that video to do 360 video. After becoming one of your fans, I now use GoPro cameras and Adobe CC suite. I'm getting pretty good, but I'd love to be able to do this 360 video. I found a GoPro 360 mount that holds a few cameras in perfect position to film 360, I think I just need to now learn how Adobe and youtube will make this work as a video that can be controlled by the viewer.
Truck is 30'. Bus is limited to 45'. School buses visible in Spruce Pine are 30'.
My great grandmother worked trimmung mica. There are TONS of old mines around here, you can barely walk around the woods without falling into one. I always wanted to go explore in one but the fear of copperheads keeps me out.
The portals are so degraded that you'd have to crawl in on hands and knees. I fear that if I went into one I may never leave it. There's a lot of sand dirt and most mines are flooded.
Worked on Chalk mountain for a bit.
As Rich said, this was interesting. So in a sense, you are responsible for my computers, tablets, cell phones, etc.! ;-) So I can blame you for all this expense! I had no idea that a computer chip was white powder. You know cocaine is a white powder too and just as addictive! ;-) Seriously, thanks for the lesson and tour. Another TLG masterpiece has hit the TUBES!!!
Electronic cocaine - Ha! I remember when Dad first brought samples of this stuff home in tiny little bottles back in the early 1980s. He said, "look at this stuff they're making in the MRL (Mineral Research Lab). You could put it in your hand and it seemed 10 times finer than flour. It was surreal how finely ground it was - and the whitest white you've ever seen. Then he would bring strange little glass globules of the material that had been formed from the melting of the powder - so clear and sparkling it was like glass from an alien civilization. I remember wondering "what in the crap can they possibly want with this stuff?" I asked Dad and he said - "something to do with communication industry." Dad was on the maintenance team at the MRL. It was his team's job to repair and trouble-shoot the complex machinery and grinders used to make the raw materials. It's amazing that he was there for many of the years when a material that would revolutionize our live was being developed. Wow.
Tony Lee Glenn I have told you before your dad is an amazing man! So can I blame him for these computer things that interrupt my life so? ;-) If it is not electronic cocaine, it is at a minimum crack! Thanks again for sharing and pass on my best to your dad. We need family videos again please!
I never knew Spruce Pine has such a big mining operation. Are there gem shops in town where they sell what comes out of their mines?
Hey Scott - there actually are some shops that sell the gems - though I'd be a bit careful about what you buy. Some is local, some imported like any other jewel store. My dad used to be a rock hound (nickname for folks who comb the old abandoned mines and quarries to search for interesting stones. He has a whole collection from a decade of scratching around. The best stones he found were a garnet about the size of a big marble, some emeralds (probably big enough for decent earrings), Aquamarine (lots of this, but not really super precious), some low quality sapphires, some really nice topaz, lots of olivine, smoky quartz etc. There are lots of minerals in the ground up there, but ultimately the worth is in industrial materials - not gem stones.
A family member just got a job as a geologist to develop more mines in the area. I want to prospect there because you can get radioactive minerals with the pegmatites. If anyone knows a good hole to look for radioactive stuff please let me know. I am brand new to rock hounding.
I work at one of these plants,its called sibelco Now,more to it than what it looks like
Do you have an update on this? I’m from johnson city and this is cool
Just that the mines are going strong. Sibelco bought Unimin. Quartz Corporation (a competitor) is a company I've done a good bit of freelance video work for. World-wide demand for the Spruce Pine Quartz is just crazy these days.
@@tonyleeglenn thanks. We were staying at rock creek camp and drove past it and I started looking. Thanks for the update
After this week’s export restrictions of gallium and germanium from China, been looking into possible counter moves from US. It’s my understanding the pure silicon from these minds is needed for a the crucible’s that are used to melt lower grade silicon.
My dad worked there.
I’m gonna put in an app at sibleco I worked for the quartz before
Just lost a good friend Steve Long worked there
Spruce pine is home to spruce pine batch, one of the most loved source s of batch powder to melt into molten glass for glassblowing. Thanks to the mines in your county, and workers like your dad a huge number of glass makers get to live our dreams
Appreciate your awesome comment here Josh. So cool that you use Spruce Pine product in your glass making.
Interesting Tony. At 2.01 to about 2.14 looks like a cartoonist sneering face to the right of the green pond just wondering if anyone else noticed it.
Interesting - now I'm seeing all kinds of little images in this Google Earth view. Thanks for re-booting my imagination Clay.
Looks like the kind of sneer George Washington might have if he could see what’s happening to this country right now... before he organized an army to go to Portland and similar places, and kick some serious antifa and blm asses. LOL!!!
Did you ever get to go look in?
Sure did. Been up there many times since making this video. It's a fascinating area where you can see the evidence of the presence of the raw materials used in the tech world all around you.
@@tonyleeglenn that is AWSOME
hi. are you srtill in Spruce Pine?
Just when I go up to visit family.
@@tonyleeglenn nice.
I wondering if you are still interested in quartz
It is THE purest quartz in the world.
Are these mines accessible to the public to hunt for themselves ?
I have a camling trip being planed end of this summer and we want to go hiking and dig for our of gems and crystals and special rocks
I made a video to answer your question. Watch it here. Awesome Place To Find Gem Stones and Other Interesting Minerals - Mitchell County NC
Hay do you know John Smith from the hospital
No. Not to my knowledge.
I'm not sure if you knew this specifically, but the Ultra Pure Quartz coming from that mine are MORE than 90% of the *GLOBAL* supply for the HIGHEST LEVEL of semiconductor chips. It is absolutely required to make the chips with 3 nanometer (or less) technology. The chips may get made mostly in Asia, BUT the base material necessary AND the Expertise to develop them is almost exclusively American.
A little side note; Biden just very recently sent down an order that Americans are now forbidden to work in the Chinese microchip industry, or lose their US citizenship. As one might imagine, there was a sudden overnight mass resignation event in the Chinese semiconductor industry. This will effectively kill China's efforts to advance their own technological base. Such technology bans began under Trump, but Biden's administration seems keen on continuing the policy. Combined with the recent Chips Act, semiconductor manufacturing in the US may get much more interesting in the not too distant future.
Thanks for sharing this insightful comment and many thanks for watching the video as well.