The Kentucky Fluor Spar Company is the only company in America that is able to fill their contracts and orders at the time specified. Located near the depot at Marion in close access to the railroad.
The three great reserve dumps at Marion, at Mexico and at Crayneville, on the Illinois Central Railroad, enable the company to do this. Good weather, bad weather, or muddy roads make no different. Scores of teams and wagons do the hauling to the railroad and hundreds of men are at work in the mines.
The Eagle Fluor Spar Company of Wheeling W. Virginia have a great vein of this spar gravel in their Asbridge mine, situated near Mexico station. The mining and raising of their product is carried on systematically and economically and a large tonnage is shipped for fluxing purposes.
The Crittenden County Lead, Zinc and Fluor spar company own lands in the immediate vicinity of the well known Memphis mine, a great producer of the best kind of grinding fluor spar.
Located three miles west of Frances on Claylick Creek was the Riley Mine.
(1905) Very few people of Marion are aware that one of the best-concentrated zinc plants in this country is within a two hour ride by buggy from Marion.
The concentrating plant is on an eminence several hundred feet above the territory surrounding it and here the shaft, 174 feet deep has been sunk and around about it has been erected a plant the equal of any in America.
At present hundred of tons of ore rough, are on the dumps and also many tons of crushed ore and concentrates. One feature of the plant is the reservoirs, two of which are located at the mill on the hill, and one in the creek with a depth of 9 feet, which two steam pumps throw the water to the reservoirs on the hill.
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Did you know that Crittenden County sent a very large mineral exhibit to the great 1903 World's Fair that was held in St. Louis? It must have been an impressive sight to behold.
In the exhibit ores, forwarded by Blue & Nunn from the "Old Jim" mine were two huge lumps of sulphide of zinc, each weighing over 3,000 lbs., the two aggregating 3 tons; also one immense piece of mixed galena was sent weighing over 1,000 lbs.
The exhibit carload also contained a most impressive lot of choice fluor spar, as well as typical grades of fluor spar, several different colors of purple, blues, yellows and white, some of them weighing more than a ton each and are beautiful to look upon in their pearly luster.
(What a treasure of history we would have if only some pictures of this wonderful load of Crittenden County minerals had been taken and saved at the World's Fair of 1903.)
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