The opening of an Arkansas Quicksilver Company adit, 1932. | Courtesy photo
Terry Reynolds, professor emeritus of history at Michigan Technological University, will present “Great Expectations: The Rise and Fall of Mercury Mining in Southwest Arkansas” at the July meeting of the Ouachita Chapter of the Arkansas Archeological Society. This talk will be held on Tuesday, July 14, at 7 p.m. in the Hugo Room in the CIC Building at Arkansas School for Mathematics, Sciences, and the Arts, 200 Whittington Ave., Hot Springs. The event is free and open to the public.
In 1930 cinnabar, the ore of mercury, “the metal of a thousand uses,” was unexpectedly discovered in southwest Arkansas, around 50 miles southwest of Hot Springs. Reynolds’ presentation will cover cinnabar mining in Clark and Pike counties, including the Clark County ghost town of Graysonia.
The discovery attracted national attention. The inhabitants of that region, as well as state leaders, greeted the prospects of a mercury mining industry with unbridled enthusiasm and no reservations, even though the industry had known health and environmental dangers.
In this talk, Reynolds will tell the story of the rise and fall of Arkansas’s mercury mining industry between 1930 and 1946, looking at the trials and tribulations of an industry trying to secure at foothold in the foothills of Arkansas’s Ouachita Mountains. Because mercury was considered a “strategic mineral,” the presentation also looks at the role that World War II and government encouragement of strategic mineral production played in the industry’s expansion and eventual collapse as World War II ended.
Reynolds is a retired professor of history at Michigan Technological University and a past president of the Society for the History of Technology. Raised in south Arkansas, he secured his BS in history at what is now Southern Arkansas University (1966) and his PhD (1973) in history, specializing in the history of science and technology, at the University of Kansas. He taught at both the University of Wisconsin and Michigan Tech during his academic career, authoring multiple books and numerous articles dealing with various aspects of the history of technology, most recently (2026) The Metal of a Thousand Uses: Mercury Mining in Arkansas, 1930-1946, published by the University of Arkansas Press.
The Arkansas Archeological Survey’s research station at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia holds regular Archaeology Lab Days. Students and members of the public are invited to come by the research station in Proctor Hall on Thursdays between 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. to learn more about archaeology in Arkansas. For more information, contact Clay Newton at 870-230-5463.