This is an interesting article about our fluorspar history. Rich and promising was the outlook of the spar mines at this time in our history. The Mexico and Frances areas of the county were busy with all the mines that dotted their landscape. What a busy place it must have been.
The Press reporter visited the village of Mexico recently and was surprised to note the thousands of tons of fluorspar in the yards there ready for shipment.
It has two general stores, well stocked and thriving, besides other business plants, and it has our old friend Squire Myers, who is watching over things. Keep your eye on Mexico, she's acomin.'
The name Mexico never has seemed just right for the class of a town that Mexico is. There's too much enterprise, go-aheaditiveness, bustle and hustle to be handicapped with the name of a foreign country.
Somebody every now and then says, "No one has ever made a profit in mining Fluor Spar." The Pigmy Mining Company over at Mexico says differently. Why, Prof. Wright of Louisville, picked out the name "Pigmy" or why he selected a section of land that none of us though of he only knows. But here's a fact, every thirty days the Pigmy Mining Company through the management of Prof. Wright packs down sixteen hundred dollars of profit and there's but little fuss made over it and another thing, the spar is not being forced, four hundred tons only are mined and shipped, just four dollars per top is the profit made on it by the Pigmy and this allows the second man to make a fair profit for his work.
This Mexico country, but a few miles south of Marion, is a whole lot of country. Here's the Hoosier Mining Co., W.H. Whittaker, President, building a hotel that will cost over five thousand dollars and he's building it for the employees.
Mr. Whitaker says, "This is to be my home hereafter and the home of many of my Michigan friends – people who know all about the copper country of Michigan and the zinc fields of Wisconsin and Illinois. Of course the Hoosier Company has a good thing, an especially strong thing in zinc; more zinc is in sight just now than we ever thought could be sold or used in America.
The Blue Grass Mining Co. is operated by Mr. Murray Saunders. A large tonnage of fluorspar is being made ready for shipment. Two shafts are in evidence here and the product is looking very good. Both shafts are producing large amounts.
The American Fluor Spar Mining Company is another high-grade spar property over here. It is in charge of Mr. Yandell and its output is solid and substantial. The quality is exceptionally strong with the possible exception of considerable iron ore (limonites), which at present unfits it for anything except open hearth fluxing.
Fred Clement is over at the Yandell shaft and he had gone down 200 feet at that point for the Kentucky Fluor Spar Company and is just ready to put a hole through at the bottom of the shaft to the vein of fluorspar a hundred feet away.
The Marion Mineral Co., this company under the efforts of Fred Clement and Johnson Crider, and other way up mining people, had a good thing and don't forget it. They really made more money selling gravel spar at about three dollars per ton on board cars at Mexico, mining it from the Pogue property.
With the Ebbie Hodge mine which is in the hands of leasers our resume of things especially Mexicanic for this week is concluded.
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