Cheever

Location: New York, United States (44.080, -73.453 approx.)

Commodities: iron; rare earth elements

Deposit model: iron oxide-apatite · low Ti-Fe-oxide, Cu-Au-U-REE

Geology

Magnetite ore from the Cheever mine is reported to be rich in phosphorus, about 0.5 percent (Kemp, 1908, p. 71), though not as rich as Old Bed ore which contains about 0.7 percent. Pieces of ore found on the dump are mineralogically similar to Old Bed ore except that quartz is more abundant and all of the apatite is green or white. The dump is only slightly radioactive, averaging about 0.04 mr per hr. 1 Large pieces of apatite-rich magnetite ore on the dump are commonly as radioactive as 0.07 mr per hr; a few outcrops of ore in the hanging wall are as radioactive as 0.15 mr per hr in places. The paucity of radioactive ore on the dump and at outcrop suggests that the Cheever mine does not contain much of it. Because the mine is inaccessible, however, its potential as a source of radioactive material is unknown. (McKeown and Klemic (1956))

Exploration and site history

• Inactive — The Cheever Orebody has been mined out, 1980 (Staatz and others (1980))
• Active — The first record of mining in the Mineville-Port Henry area was at a location later known as the Cheever Mine; The first lease reported for the mine was later in 1820, 1775–1820 (Lupulescu and Pyle (2008))
• Discovery — Discovered sometime in the 1700's, 1700 (Jackson and Christiansen (1993))

Record imported from USGS USMIN ver. 4.0 (June 2019). Developments after that date appear on facility records, not here; see the methodology.