Free Files From the Edge by Philip J. Imbrogno Page B

chapter’s materials together.
    An Ancient Beginning to the Mystery
    A very long time ago, our planet Earth was much different than it is today. The continents were in different positions and part of the northeast section of the United States was at the bottom of an ancient sea. Six hundred million years ago, the body of water we call the Atlantic Ocean did not exist; another smaller ocean lay in its place. A geologist would know this ancient ocean as Iapetus, named after the Greek mythological figure, father of the titan Atlas (for whom the Atlantic Ocean of today was named).
    During this time period, much of the eastern coast of New York lay at the fringe of proto-America; what was to be the state of Connecticut was divided into a number of sections mostly located on the floor of the ancient Iapetus ocean. After about two hundred million years, North America and Africa came together and closed the Iapetus Ocean and combined with other land masses to later form the supercontinent of Pangea. [1]
    The African and North American plate collision pushed the Iapetus Ocean floor upward, creating Connecticut in addition to the Appalachian mountains. As the two continents continued to collide, a great metamorphic process took place on the border where the Iapetus Ocean and the North American plate met: granite was changed into gneiss and quartz was fused into quartzite. If you drive along the highways of southeastern New York and Connecticut, you can still see the effects on the rock today as they are twisted and bent into bands. As the plates collided, many rocks, minerals and ores were also melted and forced to the upper crustal layers. These included serpentine, talc, chrysotile, and a highly desirable iron ore in a very high-grade form called magnetite. As the iron ore was melted from the friction of the two plates moving into and over each other, it was forced upward in a dramatic uplift that formed veins of ore between the layers of gneiss in the hills that were to become the towns of Carmel, Brewster, and Southeast. This geological history allowed settlers to find some of the purest iron ore in North America; it was mined for much of the late eighteenth and all of the nineteenth centuries. The mining days in New York are long past and the mines themselves have been closed for about a hundred years. Many residents who moved into the Brewster area within the last fifty years have no idea the mines even exist and that underneath their homes is a complex network of tunnels.
    Mine History
    There are five major mines in the Brewster area, and they all produced a high-grade iron ore, but Tilly Foster in Southeast was the largest. The mine was first owned by James Townsend from 1810 to 1830 and during this time, high-grade iron ore was taken out of the earth and shipped to Danbury, Connecticut, where it was then transported by railway to several cities in New England for further processing. The iron ore was almost pure magnetite with low levels of impurities (such as sulfur and phosphorus); this high-grade ore was in great demand by steel manufacturers, so the mining industry in Brewster began to flourish. In 1830, Tillingham (“Tilly”) Foster purchased the mine and surrounding farms. Although the Foster family never used the land for its mineral and ore rights, it still bears his name. I found this very strange since according to the records Mr. Foster paid a considerable amount of money for the mine and the land surrounding it. There is no historical record to indicate why the family never exploited the riches of the area, but there is a local legend that may explain it all.
    The story goes that shortly after purchasing the mine in 1830, Mr. Foster couldn’t sleep one summer night and decided to go for a walk. The night was clear and warm and he decided to walk to the mine entrance. As he approached the path that led to the mine, Mr. Foster felt a very cold wind that seemed to be coming out of the opening. He stopped dead in his