Experiments In Concentrating Iron Ore From The Pea Ridge Deposit, Missouri

Early in 1957 St. Joseph Lead Co. announced discovery of three new centers of iron ore deposition in east central Missouri.1 The discovery resulted from exploratory drilling in the vicinity of a magnetic anomaly or high. A deep hole, drilled into the Pre-Cambrian porphyry to determine the cause of anomaly, penetrated a magnetite-rich deposit.2 The magnetic surveys that revealed the anomalies were begun by the Missouri Geological Survey in 1929 and were continued into the 1930's 3. At that time an area in Crawford County known as the Bourbon magnetic high was located. A second anomaly, similar in size and intensity, was discovered about six miles to the northeast in Franklin County in the vicinity of Sullivan. This area was not studied in detail until the early 1940's.