When the Mining History Association announced that its 2022 annual conference was to be held in Birmingham, Alabama, we realized that on the way we could make a small detour and visit the famous Copper Basin in Ducktown and Copperhill, Polk County, Tennessee.  The Basin was the largest copper producing district in the southeastern U. S. until the mines and plants closed in 1987.  Its total production is estimated to be over 90 million tons of ore containing copper, iron, zinc, sulfur for producing sulfuric acid, and an array of other chemical products.  Our visit focused on the Ducktown [Copper] Basin Museum, the Burra Burra Mine State Historical Site, and several of the reclamation project sites in the Basin courtesy of Glenn Springs Holdings.   

The history of the Basin will only be summarized here.  The Ducktown Basin Museum, the references cited below, and scores of other publications tell a much more complete history.  This area was Cherokee land until their removal in 1836.  Native copper was discovered by a gold prospector in the southeastern corner of Tennessee in 1843.  In 1847, the first copper ore was shipped from the diggings by mule train 70 miles to the nearest railroad in Dalton, GA, and then to the Revere Smelting Works in Boston.  The Hiwassee Mine in today’s Ducktown was the first deep mine, opening in 1850.  By 1853, the Old Copper Road was constructed through the Ocoee River Gorge to allow wagons to reach the railhead in Cleveland, TN.  In 1860, the German-born mining engineer, Julius Eckhardt Raht, consolidated several mining properties into the Ducktown Sulfur, Copper, and Iron Company (DSCIC), a British firm.  He also formed the Burra Burra Copper Company.  It was named for the Australian mine of the same name.  In 1861, a copper refinery and rolling mill were erected in Cleveland, TN. 

Shortly after the Civil War began, the Confederate government confiscated the mines to supply the copper used for rifle caps for the Confederate Army; however, Union forces destroyed the railroad, refinery, and rolling mill in 1863.  This halted production, depriving the Southerners of this critical metal for the rest of the war.  Following the war, the mines reopened and prospered with improved mining methods and equipment but the high cost of transportation caused them to close again in 1879.

In 1889, the railroad finally reached the Basin and mining resumed.  In 1899, the Tennessee Copper Company (TCC) purchased most of the mines in the Basin and constructed a smelting facility at Copperhill, 3 miles south of Ducktown.  Years of cutting timber for fuel and sulfur dioxide fumes from open heap roasting of the ore, left the hillsides of the basin bare and subject to severe erosion.  Some called it the Ducktown Desert.  In 1907, farmers sued the DSCIC which operated a smelter at Isabella and was TCC’s competitor, for crop damage and forced it to build an acid plant to recover the sulfuric acid.  TCC built its first acid plant at Copperhill.  This was the start of chemical manufacturing in the Copper Basin.  In the 1920s, the flotation process enabled the production of zinc and copper concentrates. The two companies merged in 1936 retaining the TCC name.  Employees lived in the company towns of Ducktown and Copperhill, and in smaller settlements near some of the mines.  Strikes in the late 1930s led to unionization of the previously non-union district.

Following the heyday of World War II demands for metals and chemicals, the Basin began to decline.  TCC changed its name to the Tennessee Chemical Corporation in 1982.  Cities Service purchased the company in 1963 and in 1983 it was itself acquired by Occidental Petroleum Corporation (OXY).  Foreign competition, declining ore grades, labor unrest, and increasing environmental concerns brought about closure of the mines and plants in 1987.  The Copperhill sulfuric acid and some chemical plants continued to operate until 2000 using imported materials.

Our first stop was the Burra Burra Mine State Historical Site and the Ducktown [Copper] Basin Museum.  The knowledgeable staff and volunteers provided a wealth of information and shared their personal experiences of life in Ducktown. (Kaas, 2022)

The Burra Burra Mine began production in 1900 and shut down in 1958.  It produced 15 million tons of copper ore.  This early photo shows the headframe at the left and the hoist house at the right.  Although the headframe is gone, the rest of the buildings can be seen on the museum’s Walking Tour (covered in Photo Gallery 2).

Over geologic time, an iron-rich gossan formed at the top of the orebodies, above the water table.  Below that, a relatively thin enriched layer of “black copper ore” formed. It was mainly chalcocite (Cu₂S) and contained as much as 20% copper. It was the target in early mining and rapidly exhausted.  The deeper massive sulfide ore constituted most of the production from the mines in the Copper Basin.  (USGS, Emmons, et al, Professional Paper 139, 1926) 

This modern flow diagram of ore to final products shows some of the complexity of the metallurgical and chemical plants in the Ducktown-Copperhill district.  The principal products were copper (blister copper destined for a refinery and copper shot for copper chemical manufacturing), zinc, iron pellets, and sulfuric acid.  Another museum display breaks down the large number of chemical products that were produced.  Some of the iron pellets made their way to the iron furnaces in Birmingham, our final destination during this trip .