But about 70 percent of Georgia's kaolin goes to finish paper. Today, workers are busy 24 hours-a-day, trying to meet the world's ravenous appetite for "white gold."Īt ultra-modern processing plants, a mixture of water and white clay dug out of the ground is turned into hundreds of products essential to modern life, such as rubber goods, plastics, medicine, toothpaste, insulation, porcelain and paints. It wasn't until the 20th century that farmers in the kaolin-rich counties began to see the white outcroppings of kaolin as anything but nuisances to tillable farmlands. ![]() At first, only small amounts of its kaolin were used, however, and mining it was a small-time activity in a few places. Georgia's deposits are among the purest and whitest in the world. Josiah Wedgwood, famous founder of the Wedgwood Potteries in England, used Georgia white clay in the 18th century, before clay deposits were discovered in Cornwall, England. Some of it was carried, probably from near Augusta, down the Savannah River in canoes and shipped from Savannah. She received a much friendlier reception than the British troops fighting American rebels 200 years earlier.Įven before the Revolution, Georgia clay was being shipped to England. Two hundred years later, Princess Anne, representing the Queen of England, visited Sandersville as a guest of Anglo-American Clays Corp., a subsidiary of English China Clays, Ltd., a major kaolin mining and processing company in Sandersville. city named for General George Washington, victorious over the British the year before, five years before he became the nation's first president. Washington County celebrates it’s heritage as peopleįrom all parts of the world gather to enjoy arts, crafts, antiques, music, food and a parade.įounded in 1784, Washington County is one of the oldest Georgia counties. ![]() Fragments of fossilized shark's teeth and shells hint at the clay's origin near the shore of the prehistoric sea.Īn annual Kaolin Festival celebrates the importance of the resource. Mineralogists say that 50 to 100 million years ago, particles of kaolin or aluminum silicate were washed down from the rocky piedmont hills, coming to rest at the edge of a shallow sea, marked today by the fall line. Mining companies have reclaimed and restored more than 80 percent of the land that has been stripped since 1969.Ībout8 million metric tons of kaolin valued at more than $1 billions shipped annually from Georgia with most of it coming from the "white gold" belt in 13 counties along the fall line that girdles the mid-portion of the state. ![]() At the end of the 20th century, kaolin was an $800 million business and Georgia's largest volume export. Kaolin is also used in medicines, paints and many other products, all of which are shipped around the world. Sandersville is known as the “Kaolin Capital of the World.” One of Georgia’s most important minerals, kaolin is a white, alumina-silicate clay used in hundreds of products ranging from paper to cosmetics to the nose cones of rockets.
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