PEMBROKE
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PEMBROKE |
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NAME: Pembroke COUNTY: Polk ROADS: 2WD GRID: 3 CLIMATE: Fine BEST TIME TO VISIT: Anytime |
COMMENTS:
No residents. Pembroke can be found north of Ft Meade on SR17. Turn right on Pembroke Road. Things to see: Many 19th Century buildings still remain in Fort Meade. House tour material can be picked up at the Chamber of Commerce. REMAINS: Mine Lab, Commisary/Post Office |
| The Pembroke Mine was a phosphate mine and village that was first purchased in 1905 by a French company. The mine has changed several times with a second resurgence in the 40's. There was at one time 50 or more miner homes in the kudzo vine filled land around the area. Now all have fallen in and are not easy to find because of the overgrowth of vine. The commissary and Post Office is still on the corner however boarded up. In the heyday of the mine the store did not use money for purchases but paper vouchers. In this way the miners were kept "owing the company store." It is not easy to quit and leave when you owe money to the mine. The mine laboratory is still there and still in use as a laboratory since it was built in 1906. The area of the mine has housed everything from the phospahate mine to a company who built the gantry for the Redstone rocket, of early space race fame. There is a humorous story circulated that in the 40's - 50's a miner was working in a mine pit and struck a buried cache of phophorous that was left from the time when a German firm owned the mine. Since phosphorous burns with a hot and smokey white light when mixed with oxygen the strike of the shovel brought about a white light explosion. The miner ran leaving his car and all his tools in the pit hollering that he had unearthed a "hole to hell." Submitted by: Mike Woodfin |
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