Remains of mining operation still visible
The Bowie Hill iron ore mining operation near Domino, Texas, is part of what is referred to as the North Basin East Texas Mining District.
The deposit, and its counterpart, Iron Ore Lake iron mine south of Linden, is a surface mining operation seeking iron ores called siderite, goethite and hematite. Bowie Hill’s was the county’s largest and best known deposit of brown ore. It goes back to prominent use in Civil War days, especially since the Confederacy needed iron.
By the 1930s, young people would photograph themselves playing around the abandoned mine.
There are 22 districts in Cass County known to have iron ore deposits. Bowie Hill itself is a small, flat-topped, steep-sided hill with a branching plateau that reaches an altitude of about 200 feet above the surrounding bayous.
The area of iron ore formed could be considered a blanket some 6,599 feet long, 3,959 feet wide and 35 feet deep.
The earthen material in this area is sandstone from the Eocene epoch of some 56 to 33 million years ago. The commercial iron ore here averaged 3 feet thick at a depth of 8 feet. This ore was used to supply the Sulphur Fork furnace built in 1864 and also the Texas Iron Association experimental plant built in 1911 or 1912.
More than 125 prospect shafts, open cuts and trenches were dug here, with the largest being 300 feet long.
The iron ore here is found in the top 15 to 35 feet of the highest land. The western side of the hill has an open cut which has given up thousands of yards of highway construction gravel. Perhaps some of that was used in making the road from the mine to the Sulphur Fork furnace.
Nothing of the plant remains except the concrete foundation and shell of the rotary-kiln ore dryer.
During the early history of Texas, the ore was needed to supply small furnaces. The ore could be gathered by hand from exposed ledges, then prospecting would be done to discover more. This involved tests made by digging shallow trenches, deeper test pits and drill holes.
Test pits were common. They could be about 3.5 yards wide and 35 feet in depth. To make them required two men, one for digging and one for hoisting out the excavated material.
The ore would then be cleaned, washed and roasted to removed impurities.
Transportation to the furnace for smelting would be the next problem. For Bowie Hill, the nearest furnace would have been at Sulphur Fork. Major transportation could have been done with a spur to the Texas & Pacific Railroad in the east. Such a spur was graded but track was never laid.
Water was also important but scarce. Earthen dams would be built to make settling ponds. The iron ore mine at Linden had its own water source in Iron Ore Lake. Hand-size flakes of brown iron ore are commonly found there even today. One can just peer down through the clear water, then reache in and gather a piece of history in the brown iron ore.
Such mining was a large and complex story of iron ore being prospected for, mined, washed, dried and loaded on railcars for shipping.
That’s what you are stumbling over if you ever get the chance to go out into the woods around Bowie Hill or Iron Ore Lake and are awed to see those giant concrete structures now being overgrown in the woods of Cass County.