Located on the lush edge of the Cherokee National Forest, current day Ducktown, population 450, shows little evidence of its former self-save for the overgrown mine entrances alongside Highway 68 and the red soil that gleams through grassy pastures.
However, it was as recent as the 1970s that excessive 19th century copper mining practices left Ducktown and a surrounding 32,000 acres devoid of life. Forests were clear cut. Creeks were channelized and polluted with industrial discharge. Severe erosion caused topsoil to wash away, creating scars so deep they were visible from outer space.
It was known as the Copper Basin, covering a total of 60,000 acres in parts of Tennessee, Georgia and North Carolina. The largest tract was located in Polk County, Tennessee, where rock layers laced with ore stripe the landscape in long vertical formations.
It is a unique geological pattern shaped by ancient sub-marine volcanoes when the entire world was underwater.
Prior to its settlement, this remote Southeastern corner of the state was inhabited by the Cherokee. They called it Kawana, which literally translates to “Ducktown,” named for Cherokee leader Chief Duck.
Then, in 1843 a Tennessean prospector discovered what he thought was gold along North Potato Creek just south of this Cherokee land. In fact, it was copper. In 1850, the first copper mine opened in Ducktown. Shortly thereafter, prospectors from all over the world rushed to the region. By the turn of the century, 24 million tons of ore had already been hauled.
It was the era of Manifest Destiny. It was the Industrial Revolution, and copper was a key player.
“The prevailing attitude of the nation was that these resources were put here for us to use. That was justification for moving the Indians out. Control the continent and use the resources to elevate us in society,” says Ken Rush, director and curator of the Ducktown Basin Museum located on the former Burra Burra copper mine. The landmark is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The museum is filled with old relics collected from the community: black and white pages out of old yearbooks, a copper hauler’s dusty fiddle, maps of the former landscape including a framed aerial photograph taken in 1972 by NASA that shows the stricken landscape bearing an eerie resemblance to Mars.
HOW IT HAPPENED
“I doubt people understood the long-term effects. Think about it, we make a decision every day-dozens of times a day! How often do we think, is this decision going to be worth the impact? Nothing a human being does on this planet has no impact,” says Rush. In order to reach the ore, the earth was hammered and blasted. And that was the easy part. Next, the ore had to be processed. To separate the copper from its ore, the rock had to be crushed then heated to combustion.
This was known as openroasting. Copper ore was placed on top of a wood fire. Then, another layer of wood was added. Then another layer of ore, and so on. The roasts stood about 5 feet tall and 8 feet wide. They were placed outside beneath sheds. Dozens and dozens of roast piles edging the ridgeline, smoldering for days. In order to sustain high temperatures, fuel constantly needed to be added, which meant stand after stand of timber was harvested and converted to charcoal. By 1861, trees were already scarce in the Copper Basin. By 1876, the area was completely deforested and logs had to be floated in on the Ocoee River.
The blasted earth and clear-cut forests were only the beginning of the environmental troubles. During the open roasts, sulfur was released from the mineral into the air, becoming toxic gas.
“Consider the topography,” says Rush. “You have 360 degrees of mountains that tended to trap that gas. You add in the weather, which is something like 60 plus inches of rain per year, so there is a high sense of fog.” The result was sulfuric acid rain and acid fog, which destroyed any remaining vegetation. Top soil began to erode. Creeks that were channelized to prevent flooding in the industrial plants became choked with silt. Heavy metals like lead seeped in the soil. The Copper Basin became a vast biological desert.
“We benefitted as a society by getting these products much cheaper than their true cost. It basically madethe world what you and I enjoy today,” says Rush. But, he adds, “The true reality is that my generation got it for free. Every generation after mine are the ones footing the bill for clean-up.”
HOME BECOMES HOME
The seemingly endless stretch of barren red earth with all its craters and gullies formed what the people of Ducktown referred to as their “beloved red hills.”
“Kids would tell you it was the greatest playground. They could climb and slide. Parents would tell you that Junior and Sally could go a mile from the house and they could spot them the whole time,” says Rush. “You could travel five miles in any direction and find forest, but here they had this little corner that was unique and different. Home becomes home.” However, it was not sustainable.
Mining was first disrupted during the Civil War when many miners traded sledge hammers for muskets and went off to battle. In 1885, the first lawsuits were filed in response to the environmental degradation.
Open-roasting ended in 1904 when smoke stacks were erected to help disperse the noxious gases over a broader area. Then in 1908, the first acid plants were constructed which helped reduce the amount of sulfur released into the air by trapping the sulfur dioxide and condensing it into sulfuric acid-now the
most widely used manmade chemical in the world.
Once sulfur emissions were under some control, the region could look toward finally restoring the bleak land.
RECLAMATION
Amidst much local lamenting, the Tennessee Valley Authority began the first restoration initiatives in Ducktown in the 1930s. Efforts, however, were slow going. By 1984, more than 14 million trees had been planted. Still, thousands of acres of land remained critically eroded.
In the mid-1980s, copper mines began to close as industrial focus shifted to sulfuric acid-making. The last mine closed in 1987 and, according to Rush, the landscape changed almost overnight.
“Technology improved, and with that, it went from being mostly barren in the 80s to mostly vegetated in the 90s,” he says.
First, soil was treated with lime to improve its stability. Helicopters peppered the land with seeds and fertilizer. Additional trees and shrubs were planted by hand.
“It’s like a quilt,” says Rush. “Every square of quilt does not need the same thing done to it.” For instance, one of the biggest challenges (both physically and financially) was restoring clean water. There are two creeks that drain the Copper Basin: Davis Mill Creek and North Potato Creek, both of which empty into the Ocoee River. First, the banks had to be revegetated.
Then, the natural bends of the creeks were restored. Native species were reintroduced. Finally, the water, heavy with acids and metals, had to be treated. Last year, after 12 years of treatment, North Potato Creek was finally in compliance with the Clean Water Act, passed in 1972. Davis Mill Creek-having received the brunt of the metal load-is another story. Its headwaters managed to remain relatively clean throughout mining so the upper section of the creek is now piped directly into the Ocoee. The bottom section, however, is dammed so that water can be collected and circulated to the water treatment facility where it will be treated in perpetuity.
To date, the water treatment plants have removed more than 21 million pounds of metals and 41 million pounds of acid from creeks and mines in the Copper Basin. The rate of erosion
has declined from 200 tons to 8 tons per acre per year, in large part due to replanting of trees, shrubs and grasses. According to the Georgia Mineral Society, Inc., the cost of replanting efforts in Tennessee was about $3,400 per acre. The cost alone to reforest Ducktown was over 4 million dollars. But what about the cost of human health? Or the expense of native species?
“Nobody was asking those questions back then,” says Rush. So there is no data to compare or contrast, to prove or disprove actual cost. The world can only speculate on whether it was worth it. Did the benefit of the copper offset the radical environmental degradation? Rush says yes. “We still come out ahead,” he says of Ducktown and its surrounding communities.
But one must wonder if the allure of yesterday’s beloved landscape still clouds the vision like a speck of red dust in the eye.