The Hogencamp Mine

The Hogencamp Mine, operated from 1870-1880 is a small iron mine located on Black Rock Mountain in Harriman State Park, New York. The iron ore is primarily magnetite (Fe₃O₄), which occurs in veins in a banded hornblende gneiss country rock of neo-Proterozoic age. The mine mainly consists of an open-cut, though it has several shafts, as well.

This photo collection is cobbled together from three hikes that Dallas and I made in winter 2020 and spring 2021.

We parked at the main lot of the Lake Kanawauke Picnic Area, which is located a half mile west of Kanawauke Circle, on Route 106. We then walked west along Route 106, passing Lake Kanawauke, to a point along the shore of Little Long Pond where a stream flows into the pond. This point is opposite the pond’s tiny island. The country rock, a banded gneiss, is exposed in roadcuts along the road. It is cut by pegmatite veins with large orthoclase feldspar crystals and faults with slickenslides and epidote mineralization. Actually, the whole valley is thought to be a fault zone or shear zone, made topographically low by differential erosion.

We walked north on the woods road, which follows the east bank of a stream as it winds uphill. The steep, vaguely north-south woods road connects with a gently-sloping, vaguely east-west mine road that is concurrent with the Menomine Trail (blazed in yellow). From the intersection, we did three things, depending on the hike:

We walked the Menomine Trail westward and uphill, past piles of mine waste among which rocks containing grey metallic magnetite are heaped. Looking uphill, we could see one of the open-cuts of the mine. We then visited a viewpoint, accessed by a hundred-yard long informal trail that splays off the Menomine Trail a little west of the mine and south of the road, or

We walked the Menomine Trail eastward and downhill, and transferring onto the Long Path (blazed in blue) in about a half mile, and taking it north. This route passes more piles of mine waste, which in aggregate are much larger in volume than those on the westward part of the trail. It also passes a small shaft with protruding de-watering pipe and several stone foundations; or

We bushwhached straight uphill, to the edge of the open-cut. We then continued uphill, skirting the south end of the open-cut, to the rocky and open summit of the hill. It commands a superb view of Little Long Pond. We then continued west, following the ridge down until it reached the level of the Menomine Trail, which we rejoined.

The hike from the Picnic Area to the mine takes about an hour in each direction. One could spend several hours more poking around the mine.