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Except that the tractor is pulling a set of harrows, not a drilling machine. Preparation for planting corn perhaps?

Yup, harrowing to prepare the ground and the planter is way at the upper end of the field [based on an earlier photo].

the implement being pulled is a "disc" or "disc harrow" or "disc cultivator" depending on what part of the country you are from. www.everythingattachments.com/tractor-field-garden-disc-h... A "drill" is used to plant small grain crops in very narrow rows, 3 or 4 inches. Planting corn requires a "corn planter" www.binkleyhurst.com/Sales/kinze_page.htm which is also used to plant soy beans. Currently common planting spacing is corn planted in 30 inch rows and soybeans in 15 inch rows. I was a farm boy from 1950 to 1965 and operated this type of machinery.

How awful.

Is there a picture of Ducktown today? The last time we rode through that area it seemed that most of that land had been reclaimed, and looked nothing like this picture.

This is the caption that Marion Post Walcott included with her photo from 1939 but the actual damage to the vegetation occurred in the late 1800's. The smelting technology of that time did not allow the sulfur dioxide generated by the heating of the ore to be captured. By 1909 the mining companies developed new practices which let them recover the sulfur dioxide and use it in the manufacture of sulfuric acid. Reclamation in the Basin began in the 1930's with varying degrees of success initially. By the 1970's new techniques were developed and today most of the Basin has been revegetated.

Not really. The Basin remained denuded until the acid plant and mining operation went out of business in the late '80's. I grew up there, and it looked just like this till I was out of college in the '80's.

I rode thru there yesterday, 10/13/2013. The Copper Basin is now very green, and the forest is coming back. It's going to take generations for the trees to mature, however. Just don't drink the water.

I wonder what this looks like now. I live in Tennessee and would like to see what this area is like present day.

It's pretty much restored. I grew up here, and when the plant closed down in the late '80's, the earth reapired itself pretty quickly.

Doesn't look all that much restored from this image: www.bing.com/maps/default.aspx?q=ducktown,+tn&mkt=en-...

This is the caption that Marion Post Walcott included with her photo from 1939 but the actual damage to the vegetation occurred in the late 1800's. The smelting technology of that time did not allow the sulfur dioxide generated by the heating of the ore to be captured. By 1909 the mining companies developed new practices which let them recover the sulfur dioxide and use it in the manufacture of sulfuric acid. Reclamation in the Basin began in the 1930's with varying degrees of success initially. By the 1970's new techniques were developed and today most of the Basin has been revegetated.