Port Leyden

Location: New York, United States (43.585, -75.341 approx.)

Commodities: iron; titanium; rare earth elements

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

Geology

“The nelsonite is the main orebody occurring at the Port Leyden iron mine. Although the mine workings were described by Smock (1889) and Newland (1908), the first detailed petrographic report was made by Miller (1910, p. 58) in which the ore was described as being characterized by “50% quartz, 45% magnetite and pyrite, and 5% badly decomposed ferromagnesian minerals.” In fact, the quartz described by Miller (1910) is properly identified as apatite. Furthermore, in addition to magnetite, the ore contains significant quantities of ilmenite. This unusual magnetite-apatite-ilmenite mineralogy has led us to reinterpret the Port Leyden orebody to be a nelsonite.” (Darling and Florence (1995)) The nelsonite occurs in the village of Port Leyden, New York, less than 1 km east of the unconformity between Middle Ordovician carbonates and Proterozoic gneisses of the Adirondack highlands (Fig. 1). Geologically, this area is characterized by a northeast-striking, northwest-dipping package of interlayered leucocratic quartz-feldspar gneisses, metapelite gneisses, calc-silicate gneisses, and local amphibolite gneisses (Force et al., 1974; Darling, unpub. mapping). The nelsonite occurs within but near the structural base of a 1-km-wide unit of migmatized metapelite gneiss characterized by a mineral assemblage K feldspar, plagioclase, quartz, garnet, sillimanite, and hercynitic spinel (Florence and Darling, 1994). (Darling and Florence (1995))

Exploration and site history

• Inactive — The iron mine in the village of Port Leyden has been idle for about twelve years, 1877–1889 (Smock (1889))

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