Horse Creek

Location: South Carolina, United States (33.500, -81.900 approx.)

Commodities: rare earth elements (in monazite)

Deposit model: monazite-bearing stream placers · unclassified

Geology

Horse Creek, southwest of Aiken…was the site of the first large-scale mining of stream placers for monazite and other heavy minerals in the Carolinas. (Staatz and others (1979)) “This deposit is both underlain and surrounded by the Tuscaloosa Formation of Late Cretaceous age. This formation directly overlaps the crystalline rocks of the Piedmont province, and along its old shoreline the Tuscaloosa might be expected to have a higher tenor in heavy minerals than other formations of the Coastal Plain lying between the Fall Line and the ocean. At favored localities, the Tuscaloosa Formation may even contain workable deposits of heavy minerals, though none as yet has been found. The alluvial placers on Horse and Hollow (Holley) Creeks were formed by the reconcentration of heavy minerals from high-grade parts of the Tuscaloosa Formation. Such alluvial deposits are unlikely to form in large stream valleys that head far west or northwest of the Fall Line, in as much as the volume of barren alluvium would be too great to form a workable placer.” (Mertie (1975))

Exploration and site history

• Active — Mining began in the spring of 1955 and was terminated early in 1959, 1955–1959 (Mertie (1975))
• Discovery — A fluvial placer of heavy minerals was discovered during the summer of 1951 by Owen H. Perry, 1951 (Mertie (1975))
• Evaluation — Drilled by the U.S. Bureau of Mines in the winter of 1951-52, 1951–1952 (Mertie (1975))

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