Early European interest in the island followed discovery of copper in the remote north of the island, where New Zealand's earliest mines were established at Miners Head in 1842. Traces of these mines still remain, largely accessible only by boat. Later on, gold and silver were found in the Okupu / Whangaparapara area in the 1890s, with the remains of a stamping battery on the Whangaparapara Road forming one of the remainders of this time. The sound of the battery working was reputedly audible from the Coromandel Peninsula, 20km away.
In early 2010, a government proposal to remove 705 ha of land on the Te Ahumata Plateau (called "White Cliffs" by the locals) from Schedule 4 of the Crown Minerals Act, which gives protection from the mining of public land, was widely criticised. Concerns were that mining for the suspected $4.3 billion in mineral worth in the area would damage both the conservation land as well as the island's tourism economy. Locals were split on the project, some hoping for new jobs. If restarted, mining at White Cliffs would occur in the same area it originally proliferated on Great Barrier. The area's regenerating bushland still holds numerous semi-collapsed or open mining shafts where silver and gold had been mined.
Kauri logging
The kauri logging industry was profitable in the island's early European days and up to the mid 20th century. Forests however were well inland even though there was no easy way to get the logs to the sea or to sawmills. Kauri logs were dragged to a convenient stream bed with steep sides and a driving dam was constructed of wood with a lifting gate near the bottom large enough for the logs to pass through. When the dam had filled, which might take up to a year, the gate was opened and the logs floating above the dam were pushed out through the hole and swept down to the sea. The logging industry cut down large swaths of old growth, and most of
