Sterling Hill Mine

Sterling Hill Mining Museum
30 Plant Street
Ogdensburg, NJ 07439
973-209-7212

In the early 1800s zinc deposits in Sussex County, NJ began to be developed commercially, primarily at the Sterling Hill Mine and the nearby Franklin Mine in Franklin, NJ. A number of small companies were involved until 1897, when all zinc mining efforts merged into the New Jersey Zinc Company. For a number of decades the New Jersey Zinc Company was the largest producer of zinc and zinc products in the United States. In 1929 the company developed Zamak, a highly-purified zinc alloy that was used in the production of, among other things, die-cast toys. The company eventually became part of the Zinc Corporation of America, which lasted until 2002. In that year, environmental cleanup liabilities combined with record low prices for zinc ore forced the corporation into bankruptcy.

The Sterling Hill Mine was turned into a museum in 1989. In the spring, summer and fall you can visit and take a two-hour tour, during which you spend a full hour down in the old zinc mine. You also spend some time in the spacious exhibit hall, which includes a fluorescent mineral display featuring minerals extracted from the Sterling Hill and Franklin zinc mines, hundreds of mining equipment items, and a restored locker room used by workers on their way to and from the mine.

Pulverized ore was stored in silos and loaded into freight cars that pulled up through entrance ways at the bottom of the silo. The tracks led to a huge smelting and refining complex built expressly for this purpose in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, close to the anthracite coal mines of northeastern Pennsylvania.

Rocks containing zinc ore under ultraviolet radiation. The green fluorescence is from Willemite, a type of zinc ore usually found in the presence of limestone. The red glow is from Calcite, a carbonate mineral that is a common constituent of sedimentary rocks, limestone in particular. Mine managers discovered early on that ultraviolet light could be used to discover the presence of zinc in mine shafts.

The exhibit hall used to be the miner’s change house, i.e. the place where they would change clothing at the start and end of work shifts. At the end of each shift miners removed their wet and muddy work clothes, hung their shirts and pants on hangers attached to baskets, put their boots into the baskets, and pulled on chains to hoist the baskets up to the ceiling where their clothes could dry overnight. This tactic took advantage of the fact that warm air rises.

Escalator down which miners would travel at speeds three times that of an office elavator. Time = money! The angle at which the escalator descends is in parallel with sediment layers.