The Elizabeth Mine ore body is located in Strafford and Thetford, Vermont. It was discovered in 1793. The mine was initially worked for the pyrrhotite, a sulfide mineral used to manufacture copperas, an important industrial chemical used for a variety of purposes, including dye and disinfectant manufacturing.

In 1830, Strafford Copper Works was formed to mine copper. During the early mining operations, copper was smelted on site. Underground mining began in the early to mid-1800s. The mine was worked intermittently from 1830 until 1930. In 1942, the mine reopened in response to World War II and was operated by Vermont Copper Company. Most of the underground copper mining occurred between 1942 and the mine's final closure in 1958.

Following the end of mining operations in 1958, the mine property was divided into two parcels and sold. A 400-acre tract, including the 1940s and 1950s-era buildings and Tailings Pile 1 (TP1) and Tailings Pile 2 (TP2), was purchased by Leonard Cook in the early 1960s and used for storage of construction business equipment. In the 1970s, Mr. Cook auctioned all but 67 acres of the property.

The three tailings and waste rock piles are currently owned by about half a dozen private owners. The site is no longer used for commercial purposes. The town-maintained road that runs through Tailings and Waste Rock Pile 3 (TP3) is used for logging access, walking, biking and other forms of recreation.

The Elizabeth Mine is eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places. It is an historic resource of local, state, and national significance. The site embodies the distinctive landscape, engineering, and architectural resources that are characteristic of an early nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century American metal mining and processing site. The Elizabeth Mine is one of the largest and most intact historic mining sites in New England and includes the only intact cluster of hard-rock mining buildings in the region.

The Elizabeth Mine was the site of a major nineteenth-entury U.S. copperas manu- facturing plant and is associated with successful patents for copperas production. It is also associated with a number of significant commercial, scientific, and political figures, including Isaac Tyson, Jr., a Baltimore, Maryland-based chemical and mining figure who was recently inducted into the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical and Petroleum Engineers' Mining Hall of Fame.

The Cleanup's Effect on Historic Resources

EPA must design the cleanup to comply with the National Historic Preservation Act. Section 106 of the regulations that implement the National Historic Preservation Act require that federal agencies evaluate measures to avoid and/or minimize impacts of their actions to historic properties. If impacts are unavoidable and necessary to perform the cleanup, EPA must mitigate, or soften, the cleanup's impacts to historic properties.

The Community Advisory Group, the State Historic Preservation Office and EPA have been working together to develop cleanup alternatives that address environmental issues and minimize the impact on historic resources at the Elizabeth Mine. Cleanup alternatives have been designed that:

EPA will work with a number of interested parties to develop a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) that outlines actions that the EPA will take to mitigate, or compensate for, the cleanup's impact on historic resources.

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