Before you could simply buy sandpaper from OBI, the mineral emery was mined in the mountains of Naxos. Partly from the opencast mine, partly from long tunnels, the mineral was taken from the mountains with lorries and transported via cable cars to the ports on the north coast of Naxos. At some point in the late 1940s, corundum was artificially produced and the trade was no longer profitable. Here you can still discover many traces of the once industrious activity. The site is freely accessible, some tunnels can be visited and you can even find the old diesel engine from 1925 that powered the cable car in its building. Twenty years ago an attempt was made to establish an open-air museum here, but adverse circumstances prevented it and, like so many other EU-sponsored projects, it came to nothing.
Translated by Google •
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