Crittenden had a Barite Mill

 

Mico Mining & Milling Announces Operation

A group of St. Louis investors headed by Mr. Albert Balenson have started a new mining and milling operation just south of the state highway 91, one and one-half miles from Cave-In-Rock ferry landing.

To date they have completed an 8000 feet 6 inch water supply line from the Ohio River, a 16,000 gallon storage reservoir, and a barite concentration mill, consisting of a washing plant and a jig mill to process alluvial barite deposits located near the mill site. 

According to Mr. Ralph Pringle, the local superintendent, they are employing ten men at the present time and will probably double this number in the future.

The mill has been in operation for about two weeks and has reached an output of about 100 tons per day of high grade barite ore.

The company is incorporated as the Mico Mining and Milling Company and expects to make its first shipment of 1000 tons by river within the next week.

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A part of our forgotten past is a barite mill that was located on Hwy. 91, right next to the Aunt Jane Tabernacle Rd.  Today there is not anything there to even show that once a mill sat there.  The large reservoir pit that was next to it is now filled up with trees and you can't even see the opening.

From the April 24, 1958 Crittenden Press. 

A top view of the Mico Mining & Milling Co. barite mill just off Ky. 91 near Cave-In-Rock Ferry.  Taken from the ramp leading to the washing mill, the picture shows the conveyor belt at left which carries washed ore into the jig mill.  The conveyor on the other side of the building to the right carries processed barite, 95 percent pure, to the pile, where trucks pick it up for transportation to river barge loading facilities on the Ohio river.

A bulldozer at work in the alluvial barite deposit on the V. E. Cook property near the mill.   

Barite, or barium sulfate is sometimes called heavy spar, has a specific gravity of about 4.5 is used in drilling oil wells and for other industrial uses.

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I have no knowledge of how long this operation was in use, but it must have not been very long.