Pix - Regency Square Area BEFORE Regency Square; Ponte Vedra Mining

[stjr]

Regency area BEFORE Regency!:

Below appears to be Arlington Expressway and Southside Blvd:





Below appears to be Arlington Expressway and Atlantic Blvd.:



Below appears to be Atlantic and Southside Blvd.:



Below appears to be looking toward future Regency Square site from Southside Blvd.:



Arlington Expressway exit:



Anyone know where the C. T. Boyd expressway is today?  Was this an original name for the Arlington Expressway?:





Is this Arlington and Southside Blvd based on the directional sign?



Another mystery, but I guess either Atlantic and Arlington or Southside and Arlington:

[02roadking]

Where did you unearth these from.....are these dated at all?

[jaxtrader]

Great pics! "They paved paradise to put up a parking lot".

[Charles Hunter]

In this case, "paradise" was a strip mine from WW2 and after, that created all those sand dunes.  I forget what they were mining, maybe someone else remembers this bit of local history?

[lindab]

They were called Humphries Gold Mines and when I was small, I thought gold came from them. It was however, titanium and other valuable minerals. For years, after the mines closed and before the development, they were dune buggy driving areas.

[Dog Walker]

In this case, "paradise" was a strip mine from WW2 and after, that created all those sand dunes.  I forget what they were mining, maybe someone else remembers this bit of local history?

Mr. Humphries was a mining engineer who developed a method of dredging up mineral bearing sand and separating the minerals from the quartz with a centrifuge and electric charges.  He got the rights to mine a strip of land from the St. John's River to the St. Johnn's County line.  The dredge floated in its own little lake and moved the lake along by filling the used sand in behind it as it moved along.

He evidently had an operation in Colorado too, because in the late 50's and early 60's, he used to fly back and forth to Craig Field in a WWII surplus B-26.  He had a big easy chair installed in the space of the bomb bay claimed that the hours spent with an oxygen mask on was good for him.  I can remember pumping 1200 gallons of 110 octane aviation fuel into that plane and giving the pilot books of green stamps for it.  This was all way before the days of private jets.

What they were recovering from the sand was mostly titanium dioxide which replaced lead as the white pigment in paint.  DuPont now does this kind of mining still.

[BridgeTroll]

Very cool info DW!  I decided to "dig" further...

http://www.onemine.org/search/summary.cfm/Heavy-mineral-mining-in-the-Atlantic-Coastal-Plain-of-Florida-and-Georgia-and-the-chemical-and-physical-characteristics-of-the-deposits?d=0F3A4ABCC95BF91E9B31CA58640D4D34397F6FBAD1F94393A9661F13C5157E2544493&fullText=woodbine%20%20gold%20mining%20%20company

Heavy minerals have been mined from the sands of the United States’ Atlantic Coastal Plain since the early part of the twentieth century. Production of ilmenite from beach sands near Mineral City (Ponte Vedra), Florida, began in 1916. The first reported large-scale recovery of zircon in Florida was reported from this deposit in 1922 and of rutile in 1925. These operations ceased in 1929. Today the Ponte Vedra Country Club and Golf Course is situated in the center of the former mining site. In 1942 heavy-mineral operations were established on 202 hectares of land situated in Duval County, Florida. The location is about 16 kilometers east of the center of Jacksonville, Florida, in an area known as Arlington. This operation demonstrated that low-grade sand containing only 2 to 3 percent titanium minerals could be concentrated economically with the Humphreys spiral and that the oxides could be separated from the heavy silicates by electrostatic methods. Much of this area is now covered by a large mall and is a major retail- commercial center. Between 1958 and 1964 the Skinner tract, a deposit about 4 kilometers south of the above deposit, was mined. Today the area of this deposit is known as Deerwood, a gated country club community on the southside of Jacksonville. Further inland, E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co. has been mining heavy minerals from a physiographic feature known as Trail Ridge since 1948, and a deposit near Green Cove Springs, Florida has been in production since 1972. Since the start of heavy-mineral mining in the southeastern United States, nine heavy-mineral ore bodies either have been or are being exploited in Florida and Georgia. Other deposits either have been lost to mining or are yet to be mined. These deposits have different origins. Some formed along shorelines at the heights of marine transgressions while others formed on regressional beach ridge plains during periods of temporary stillstands or slight transgressions. These different origins are reflected in the chemical and physical characteristics of the deposits. Ilmenite in older, more western deposits has a higher TiO2 content than ilmenite in younger, more eastern deposits. TiO2 content does not very with north-south direction. Garnet and epidote are absent or rare in the older Trail Ridge deposits, but progressively become common in the younger Duval Upland, Crestal Pamlico, and Holocene deposits. Grain size is coarsest for Trail Ridge sediments and finest for sediments in Duval Upland and Crestal Pamlico deposits. The average grain size for Holocene deposits is intermediate between Trail Ridge and Duval Upland deposits. The two models for the origin of the heavy-mineral deposits â€" deposits formed at the height of major marine transgression; and deposits formed during periods of temporary stillstands or slight transgressions that occur during a general marine regression; - are consistent with known sedimentological data and depositional trends.

[BridgeTroll]

Here is some more...

http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=kt796nb3xp&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=d0e2090&toc.depth=1&toc.id=d0e2038&brand=oac

Humphreys Gold Corporation; Mining Beach Sands in Florida, 1948
Livermore
I was looking around for jobs, and one came up in Florida, with a company called Humphreys Gold Corporation.

6. See James V. Thompson, "Mining and Metallurgical Engineer: The Philippines Islands; Dorr, Humphreys, Kaiser Engineers Companies; 1940-1990s," Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1992.

It wasn't a gold mine but it was kind of an interesting mine. It was beach sands containing heavy minerals with titanium in the form of ilmenite and rutile, plus zircon, and also there was a certain amount of monazite. We didn't produce that commercially, though; there was no market for it at that time.


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― 23 ―
It was an interesting deposit, because it was practically on the outskirts of Jacksonville, on the beach. It was a dredging operation, and my job was running the exploratory drilling. We were drilling ahead of the dredge, blocking out reserves, so we had a kind of an unusual drill which was built there to drill down through the dune sands, which was kind of a difficult operation.


Swent
Tell a little bit about it; you had told me a couple of interesting stories about Mr. Humphreys.


Livermore
Well, yes. Mr. Humphreys was an interesting fellow. There were two brothers; one was an inventor, and the other was a businessman. They were a very good combination.

Mr. Humphreys the inventor--one of his inventions was a spiral, the Humphreys spiral, which was a very simple device. No mechanical moving parts.

The sand would circulate around the spiral and the heavy minerals would have a tendency--because of the difference in specific gravity--to settle into the center of the spiral. By cutting off the inside portion of the stream, we could concentrate large quantities of sand very quickly.

This was a very large operation. We were literally dredging I think a thousand tons an hour, something like that. They had a big battery of these spirals, and would produce a concentrate very cheaply, and that's really the only way that made this particular operation profitable.

Then that concentrate was dried, and they had a further refining process, which was an electrostatic process, to separate out the various heavy minerals. That was a very simple device; you wonder why somebody else hadn't thought about it sooner.

The other thing Humphreys invented--he was a fisherman--and of course fishing reels have their axis perpendicular to the pole. And often, there's a problem with backlash. Well, he had the bright idea, why not rotate that axis 90 degrees? The line would come off the top of the reel instead of the conventional position. That eliminated most of the backlash.

You know, inventors are amazing people. No one had ever thought of just simply turning the reel 90 degrees, and so that was his other great invention. Both of them very simple, very practical things, which no one had ever thought of.


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― 24 ―
He invented other things too; his head was continually in the clouds, like most inventors. But his brother was a hard-headed businessman, and between the two of them, they did very well. That Humphreys spiral was used in a lot of different mining applications.


Swent
You said they also had a special drill?


Livermore
Well, that's right. Sand is very hard to drill, because the walls cave in very readily. The normal drills just simply won't work. This was a very simple device. It just had a jet of water inside a casing. A heavy weight at the top of the water jet drove the casing down at the same time as the jet flushed out the sand from the bottom of the casing. They had attempted other methods which simply did not work; they tried to core it, or they tried to just drive it down, just bull it down, driving through the sand without a jet. We were down below the water table, and the sand would just cave in. But this system just worked beautifully. You could just go zooming right down.

Then the cuttings would wash out, and we'd save them. This machine was invented and built right there at the mine.

Also we had trouble driving across the sand dunes with the regular truck; you could easily get bogged down. So they designed special old military half-tracks with a drill mounted on them, and we'd drive them across the dunes, and do the drilling. The Humphreys group was a very imaginative organization.


Swent
So it was your job to find the sands that were productive and tell them where to dredge?


Livermore
Yes, and to block out the reserves, and how much overburden there was, and things like that. So that was an interesting job, and that lasted about a year.

[BridgeTroll]

I would like to learn more about the man himself... I have not had much luck.  Is it Humphreys or Humphries?  Seems there were more than a few of both in the mining business...

[BridgeTroll]

Another short blurb...


http://www.dep.state.fl.us/geology/geologictopics/minerals.htm

Heavy mineral mining began in 1916 near Mineral City (now Ponte Vedra Beach) to supply ilmenite for WWI titanium tetrachloride production.  In the mid-1920s, zircon and rutile were also produced in this area.  Other beach deposits near Jacksonville, Melborne, and Vero Beach were worked through the WWII years.  Extraction of heavy minerals is today concentrated along the Trail Ridge of western Duval and Clay Counties.

[BridgeTroll]

I happen to agree with the decision to change Mineral City to Ponte Vedra Beach...
Do you suppose any of em know they are living over a former mine?


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ponte_Vedra_Beach,_Florida

In 1916 the community was known as Mineral City, and titanium (ilmenite) extraction was significant, as well as that of zircon and rutile.[2] These minerals were recovered from beach sands by a private commercial firm called National Lead Company, directed by Henry Holland Buckman and George A. Pritchard. During the First World War titanium was a component of poison gas, and therefore a strategic mineral. The golf courses created for recreational purposes by their company became the root of the present golf industry.

[BridgeTroll]

BINGO!  Here we go!!  Pictures of their mansion in Denver!

http://books.google.com/books?id=AO5-0H9oAXEC&pg=PA68&lpg=PA68&dq=Humphreys+Gold&source=bl&ots=qTpQO7ylKQ&sig=bTHBwuzVJmIMpn0oLLtWOZgfv1k&hl=en&ei=joNsSty0Eda3twfCgPmaAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1

[BridgeTroll]

He or they are inventors of the "Humphrey Spiral"...

http://www.websters-online-dictionary.org/Hu/Humphrey%2527s+spiral.html

HUMPHREY'S SPIRAL


Specialty Definition: HUMPHREY'S SPIRAL
Domain Definition
Mining A concentrating device that exploits differential densities of coal and its associated impurities by a combination of sluicing and centrifugal action. The material gravitates down through a stationary spiral trough with six turns (five for ore treatment) of mean radius 8 in (20.32 cm) with a fall per turn of 11 in (27.94 cm). Heavy particles stay on the inside, the lightest ones climb to the outside, and the resulting bandsare separated at convenient points. (references)

And...

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/5193687.html

Gravity separators having metallic troughs, especially Humphreys spirals United States Patent 5193687
Abstract:A gravity-magnetic separator (10) for concentrating magnetic materials (28), particularly iron, is disclosed. The preferred separator is a cast-iron Humphreys spiral retrofitted with powerful rare earth magnets (22) beneath its separating surface (14), the magnets being sufficiently strong to overcome the shielding effect of the cast-iron spiral and induce a magnetic field at the separating surface of about 60 gauss to about 120 gauss. The resulting gravity-magnetic separator enhances the recovery of iron in a commercially significant way.

[stjr]

Where did you unearth these from.....are these dated at all?

These pix are from the Florida State archives where earlier pictures on another thread of San Jose and Lakewood were taken from.  Unfortunately, all are undated.  I am sure JTA could tell you when these roads were built since they were part of the original, pre-interstate, Jacksonville Expressway System.  My guess is between 1955 and 1965 (between construction of the Matthews Bridge and Regency Square).

Stephen and Bridge:  Great data "mining" of history!    I knew the story but not the level of details.  Jax has been touched by a lot of "characters"  over the years and someone could write a fascinating book with their stories as a companion to Wayne Wood's Jax Architectural Heritage book.

[BridgeTroll]

I love doing this stuff... you never know wher it will lead...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant-Humphreys_Mansion

Grant-Humphreys Mansion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
Coordinates: 39°43′41″N 104°58′50″W / 39.728102°N 104.980577°W / 39.728102; -104.980577
Grant-Humphreys Mansion
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
The Grant-Humphreys Mansion on Pennsylvania Street in Denver, Colorado
Location: 770 Pennsylvania St
Denver, Colorado
Added to NRHP: September 30, 1970
NRHP Reference#: 70000160

Grant-Humphreys Mansion in Denver, Colorado, was built in 1902, in the Neoclassical style of architecture by Boal and Harnois, for James Benton Grant following his one term as the third Governor of Colorado (1883-1885). The house has been home to two families. Grant is best known for his role in the ore smelting industry, the first in Leadville, and then in Denver, where the Grant Smelting Company, located two miles northeast of downtown Denver, boasted the tallest furnace stack in the country and the third-largest in the world. Mr. Grant's wife, former Mary Matteson Goodell, was prominent in Denver society. She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution and helped to found a home for destitute children. Following her husband's death in 1911, she continued to live in the house six more years, selling it in 1917 to Albert E. Humphreys.

A.E. Humphreys is remembered as "The Wildcatter Deluxe" and the "King of the Wildcatters" for his successful discovery of oil in Wyoming, Oklahoma and Texas. He was also well known for his philanthropic activities, which were shared by his wife, Alice. The couple came to Denver in 1898 with their two sons Ira and Albert E. Jr. Ira married Lucille Pattison, and they lived with the senior Humphreys in the house until the deaths of his parents.

Ira was the mechanical genius of the family, while A.E. Jr. enjoyed the managerial side of the family oil business. Both young men were fascinated with airplanes and opened Denver's first commercial airport in 1918 at 26th Avenue and Oneida Street in North Park Hill, ten years prior to the Denver Municipal Airport that was eventually to become Stapleton International Airport. In 1919, Ira Boyd "Bumps" Humphreys formed the Curtiss-Humphreys Airplane Company.1 In 1941, Ira invented the Humphreys Spiral Concentrator, which was used extensively in the mining industry for the separation of minerals and heavy metals in low grade ores.2

The Colorado Historical Society took possession of the mansion, a bequest of the late Ira Boyd Humphreys, in 1976. The walls were originally covered in damask which unfortunately fell into disrepair and has since been removed.