Spruce Pine

And that one of the key parts is an ultra-pure quartz used to make the crucibles that they eat in.

It comes from two mines in Spruce Pine, North Carolina.

That's right.

It's fascinating how the whole thing works.

Let's step back again.

Let's first talk about why spruce mines and then let's generalize it to why do we have this highly distributed supply chain.

So, you know, it's a geological oddity, the kind of quartz or sand that exists in Spruce Pine, North Carolina.

It yields the most pure sand you can have in order to build crucibles.

But we've $25,000, 100 volunteers we deployed to Western North Carolina.

Our members worked in, we went to Spruce Pine, Bakersfield, Madison County, Avery County Airport there.

We sent people all up there.

I mean, many pl- in Asheville area.

He was just a, he was a, a transportation specialist at that time.

Probably a better name for that.

But we worked als- alongside organization, the Baptist, the Baptist Men, or whatever that organization called in Spruce Pine.

We worked with Samaritan's Purse in Asheville.

Hi, Derek.

My name's Carla, and I'm calling from Spruce Pine, North Carolina, Smoky Mountains, although my event happened in DeBary, Florida, Central Florida.

And what happened was in the particular house that I was living in, I had lived there about twenty-two, twenty-three years, and it was just a regular day, and I had stepped out onto my front porch to go check the mail.

But when I did so, I saw my neighbor, Pete, walking down the street towards my mailbox, and I think I was, like, in my pajamas or in my robe or something like that.

They're gonna come to Hickory to buy that Toyota if that's what they choose to buy.

So we know very distinctly that the prosperity that occurs in an adjacent or a nearby county, whether it's Spruce Pine or Burke County, that's going to accrue in some manner.

We do not hesitate to make sure that we can do what we can do to try and help out our neighboring counties.

So we've done that.

Right.

So you talk about a couple of examples, Spruce Pine and the quartz deposits up there.

You talk about this plan or this vision for passenger rail to run between Salisbury and Asheville, I guess, for easier transit for the homeless population to get to Asheville.

No, I'm kidding, but not really.

I don't think any one plan from the state level is really going to move the needle on moving Western North Carolina forward.

I mean, there are some interesting ideas in there.

I absolutely think Spruce Pine needs to double down on its unique geographic

assets.

So the first is that a tiny North Carolina town helps keep the digital world running.

So in this original social media post, it's basically saying that Our tech companies rely on this town called Spruce Pine for quartz.

That quartz is, this place is the region that like 99% of all computers in the world rely on this particular town.

So there was a little blowing things out of proportion.

And this source is from the U.S. Geological Survey Mineral Commodity Summaries.

on quartz.

Around spruce pine lies one of the world's most important deposits of high purity quartz.

This quartz is used to make the crucibles needed to grow the silicon crystals that eventually become semiconductor wafers, the foundation of all of our computer chips.

But even wilder than the helium is the quartz.

There is a single town, Spruce Pine, North Carolina, that holds a ninety percent global monopoly on the ultra-high-quality quartz required to make the silicon wafers in the first place.

Wait, why a random town in North Carolina?

It comes down to atomic purity.

The quartz mined in Spruce Pine has virtually no impurities.

Oh, I see.

When you melt it down to make the crucibles that hold the molten silicon, it doesn't contaminate the batch.