La Grasta Mine (“pirrera Grasta” in the local dialect) was active for more than 150 years, beginning with the opening of the first tunnels in 1839, when the Upper Miocene seams attracted entrepreneurs from across the island. Within a few years, headframes, Gill furnaces, and the essential lodgings of the carusi—boys who descended as far as 150 meters carrying thirty-kilo sacks on their backs—sprang up. On 27 November 1863, a cloudburst turned the ravine into a whirlpool, flooding the tunnels and killing thirty-five miners: a tragedy remembered in songs dedicated to Saint Barbara, the patron saint of sulphur miners.
In the 1920s, the Ferrara company installed electric hoists and fans, making La Grasta one of the most modern plants in the district. The purity of the deposit, enriched by delicate blue celestine crystals sought after by mineral collectors, made the mine strategic for the production of fertilizers, glass, and explosives destined for European markets. Decline came in 1987, crushed by competition from sulphur extracted using the Frasch method and by the energy crisis: machinery, rails, and the tall furnace chimney remained outdoors, prey to wind and vegetation.
Today, among broom and prickly pears, the office building, the metal headframe, and the entrance to the main gallery still survive, accessible with volunteer guides from the junction of State Road 190, the “road of the mines.” Along the trail, educational panels illustrate Miocene geology, the hard life of the carusi, and the impact of sulphur on 19th-century Sicilian economy. At sunset, the settling basins glow with the same bright yellow as the crystals that made La Grasta famous, while in the background Mount Etna seems to hover in the clear air: an industrial landscape fading away, inviting reflection on the human cost of modernity and the urgency of preserving the memory of a harsh but identity-defining labor for the Nisseno hinterland.