Missouri has a long and rich mining history. It was the search for minerals (gold and silver) along with beaver pelts that brought the first French-Canadians to what is now known as Missouri (Burford, 1978). Interestingly the first mining in the state was by early Americans who mined "flint" or chert for arrowheads in an area south of St. Louis, mined iron ores in eastern Missouri for use as red and yellow pigments, and mined "earthen materials" for pottery. The state has a strong and varied mineral resource base - metals, industrial minerals, and min- eral fuels. A historical view of the value for all mineral commodities from 1900 to 2000 is provided in Figure 1 (Bixler 2002). Mineral commodities presently produced in Missouri are: crushed and dimension stone, Portland and masonry cement, lime, construction sand and gravel, bentonitic clay, refractory clay, common clay and shale, industrial sand, lead, zinc, copper, silver, coal, and petroleum (Rueff, 2002). In 2000, the value of all mineral production in the state exceeded $1.1 billion. As shown on Figure 2 over 80 percent of this value was from industrial minerals, nearly 18.5 percent was from metallic minerals and slightly over 1 percent was from mineral fuels. There are presently nearly 400 mineral operations active in Missouri.
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