Origin of Ochre (Part 2.)

 Last post, we saw how the Adirondacks are far older than mountains in Vermont and New Hampshire, and how the farther east you go, the younger the mountains. Even in their prime, the Taconics, Greens, and Whites never reached even half the height of the original Adirondacks. However, water and wind conspired over millions of years to break rock back down to grains of sand. Sediment from the mighty Adirondack mountains can be found today as far away as central Pennsylvania.  And iron oxide clays made of sediment from the Adirondacks settled in isolated pockets from Bennington to Monkton on the eastern slope of the mountains facing the ocean left in the wake of the retreating and so far anonymous continent.  

Ochre production in Brandon may have started as a byproduct of iron mining.  One of the earliest industries in Brandon was founded by John Conant and Sons.  Although not all the details are known, this company probably had an interest in iron mining, furnaces for turning ore into pig iron, and forges for turning pig iron into the Conant Stove, one of their signature products.  Iron was big business in Brandon in the first half of the 19th century.  In 1845, Brandon produced  a staggering, and environmentally disastrous, 1200 tons of iron, employing 200 men. Like many environmentally dubious enterprises, this one was unsustainable.  As it grew harder to find the 300 acres of forest required every year to feed the furnaces, J Conant and Sons saw the writing on the walls. In 1851, the Conant furnace and ore beds were sold to the Brandon Iron and Car Wheel Company.  



Photo courtesy Brandon Chamber of Commerce

According to Brandon Vermont: A History of the Town, in 1856, just 11 years after purchasing their interest in iron production, the Brandon Iron and Car Wheel company had given up the manufacture of iron car wheels and was producing and selling paints and kaolin. According to the same text, the Brandon Mining Company was formed in 1855.  This venture had 80 acres of “mineral fields” and produced between 500 and 1000 tons of product annually for the paint industry.  They, in turn, were followed by the Brandon Kaolin and Paint Co. Deforestation and the loss of a necessary fuel source-wood or charcoal-may have been a significant factor in the end of iron mining in Brandon.

The production of paint pigments and kaolin involved grinding clay and dissolving it in water, allowing the resultant product to settle in a series of basins, and extracting the resulting sediment.  As hinted above, the remains of  infrastructure for this industry  are located off the end of Paint Works Road, on the east side of McConnell Road (see photo). Drying sheds for further processing of pigments were located on the south side of Paintworks Road and are no longer visible.  Production of ochre-based paint pigment and kaolin continued until 1925.  

Long before the kaolin and iron industries, Native Americans were quarrying quartzite in Vermont for tools and projectile points.  We’ll take a look at the past and present of quartzite in the Brandon area next.


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