Zirconia, North Carolina

Zirconia, a small community in Henderson County, is named for what lies beneath it. The surrounding hills hold valuable zircon deposits. Zircon crystals were then highly valuable as mantles for gas lamps, making them almost industrially strategic.

Mining in the area drew prospectors and investors in the early nineteen hundreds. Zirconia remains unincorporated today, its brief mineral celebrity long faded, but the name preserves what the ground once gave up.