Abstract Students of mineral deposits have generally bypassed the Appalachians in preference to studying deposits of the western United States. A “western outlook” in economic geology is not surprising. For the mining and exploration geologist, the western United States has traditionally represented a wide-open land with excellent rock exposure, no glacial cover or saprolite, and vast acreages of public land available for prospecting. Furthermore, many economic geologists have felt that virtually all important deposits of the Appalachians were discovered and thoroughly studied long ago. Hence, a generation or two of economic geologists, with the exception of a few hardy academic, government, and exploration geologists, have given short shrift to the study of Appalachian mineral deposits.

Modelers of the Carolina state belt (CSB) have come to view the province as a remnant of a late Precambrian-early Paleozoic island arc. Thus the metallogeny and tectonic setting of the stratabound massive sulfides, iron/manganese formations, and barite deposits, of the Au, W, and Cu veins, of disseminated Cu and Mo porphyry-like deposits, and of the kyanite-andalusite-pyrophyllite deposits are of considerable significance. On the basis of a characterization of these deposits and their regional setting, it can be concluded that (1) the eastern parts of the CSB in North Carolina were dominated by subaerial to shallow marine conditions with volcaniclastic debris shed westward into a deepening back-arc basin, (2) the major folds of the area were syndepositional, (3) the nonfoliated, postmetamorphic granites are typical of those related to post-tectonic plutonism, (4) the Kings Mountain belt appears to have developed in a similar tectonic setting to the CSB, (5) the aluminosilicate deposits mark significant linear zones of subaerial to shallow submarine volcanism which terminate basinward in volcanic centers, and (6) the western parts of the CSB were dominated by relatively deep water, quiet conditions, distal to volcanic centers.