Galería de Minerales FMF

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AERIAL PHOTOGRAPH – TERRANERA MINE SITE

This aerial view captures a vibrant tableau of East Elba’s coastline, a place where the echoes of a laborious industrial past now serve as a dramatic backdrop to modern leisure. The landscape is dominated by two key tourist landmarks: the shimmering, dark waters of Laghetto di Terranera, a small coastal lake, and the adjacent Spiaggia di Terranera, its shoreline a lively mosaic of colourful umbrellas and the joyful activity of sunbathers enjoying the Tyrrhenian Sea.

Beneath this idyllic scene, a deeper history is etched into the very rock and soil. At the location marked “A,” the skeletal remains of a structure from the island’s mining era stand as a silent testament to a bygone age. The dilapidated steel frame and decaying brick walls, spectral remnants of a bygone industry, loom over the water. Below them, a solitary stone foundation, a testament to the structure’s original footprint, juts into the sea. Its stones, once a firm base, are now worn smooth by the ceaseless caress of the waves, a quiet sentinel marking the inexorable passage of time. Further inland, the subtle depression highlighted at “B” marks a portion of the former Capo Bianco mine. This great wound in the earth has long since been filled and secured, a scar healed over by time and reclamation efforts, leaving only a gentle concavity in the terrain to hint at the excavation that once took place.

The geological narrative of this coastline is written in the dramatic contrast of its rock formations. The foundational rock is dark, layered Schist, which provides a somber canvas for the intrusions that give the area its mineral wealth. Cutting through this ancient metamorphic rock are dykes of upper Miocene leucogranites —intrusive veins of pale, crystalline igneous rock that forced their way up from the Earth’s mantle. These bright granitic fingers are prominent from the area just north of Capo Bianco, sweeping northwards, and re-emerging dramatically as a major outcrop that breaks the sea’s surface approximately 100 metres from the Cape itself. Adjacent to these outcrops are lenses of mylonite marble.

This very geological intrusion is the source of the region’s famed Iron. The mineralization presents itself in two distinct patterns. At the site of the Capo Bianco mine, the valuable ores were concentrated in a dense, egg-shaped pod, a geological prize that was vigorously exploited. A more extensive and visually striking formation traces a vast, horse-shoe shaped halo around the Laghetto di Terranera. This rust-coloured band of mineralization, approximately 50 metres in width, follows the western and eastern shorelines of the lake and beyond, a tell-tale stain revealing the rich deposits of iron that once made this stunning coastline a centre of intense industrial labour. (Author: silvia)