For a Geologist, Coos Bay Is an Ideal Place to Work and Live

Joe Drew can easily pinpoint the genesis of his interest in rocks, minerals and geology. It all started during his family vacations as a child.

Joe Drew

“I was a kid from Illinois, where there’s not a lot of mountains or rocks. It’s all dirt,” said Drew, 32, the Director of Geology for Oregon Resources Corporation. “So we’d go on vacation to Appalachia or South Dakota or someplace like that and all the rocks were interesting to me.”

One of his most vivid vacation memories was in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, in the Smoky Mountains near Asheville.

“They had a site where you could pan for garnets and minerals and I thought it was the neatest thing,” Drew added. “Ever since then I knew I was going to get into geology, and I never looked back.”

Joe went on to get bachelors and masters degrees in geology and geophysics at the University of Missouri-Rolla, now called the Missouri University of Science and Technology (and formerly Missouri School of Mines).

That got him a job with DuPont based in Florida where, similar to his work in Oregon, his group was excavating beach sands for titanium minerals (ilmenite, leucoxene, rutile), zircon, aluminum silicates, and staurolite. DuPont used these minerals to make paint pigment as well as foundry, blasting, and refractory uses.

Two years later he was in Georgia working as a mine geologist for Iluka Resources, where he met two other future ORC employees: Todd Lessard and Dan Smith. All three ultimately wound up settling in the Coos Bay area with their families.

Joe and his wife, Jessica, bought a home in the area in 2006 and spend their off time enjoying the scenery and outdoors along the Oregon coast. They are expecting their first child in October.

“There are so many historical places, old towns that have a history and old historical buildings. We like to get out and hike, so for us this is a great place to live,” he said.

It helps that he is deeply involved in a project that is so connected to the Coos Bay area.

“Everyday something new happens that makes us sit back and think that this project has gone from an idea to now working and producing product,” he said. “That’s real nice. It’s great that we have had the opportunity to guide and nurture this project from its infancy to where it is now.”