Some three decades after phosphate rock was first mined in England to be used in fertilizer, Dr. C. A. Simmons, who owned a rock quarry for building stone in Hawthorne, near Gainesville in Alachua County, had some of his rock sent to Washington, D.C. in 1880 for analysis. The rock was determined to contain phosphate.
[url]Some three decades after phosphate rock was first mined in England to be used in fertilizer, Dr. C. A. Simmons, who owned a rock quarry for building stone in Hawthorne, near Gainesville in Alachua County, had some of his rock sent to Washington, D.C. in 1880 for analysis. The rock was determined to contain phosphate.[/url]