The Metal Behind Your Sense of Taste RoadyGoat

Zinc isn't just an ore in the ground, it's an essential nutrient your body needs, and one of its jobs is wonderfully specific: it helps run your sense of taste. Zinc is found in every cell and supports immune function, but it's also a key ingredient in an enzyme in your saliva called gustin, or carbonic anhydrase six. That enzyme helps your taste buds grow, renew and do their work. When zinc runs low, gustin activity falls off and taste buds don't maintain themselves as well, which is why a zinc shortage is linked to a dulled sense of taste and, often, smell. It's a strange thought standing in a town named for the metal: the same element they once mined out of these hills is quietly helping you taste your lunch right now.

12.2 mi away

The Metal That Dies So Steel Won't Rust RoadyGoat

That shiny coating on guardrails, chain-link fences and trailer frames is zinc, and it pulls off a quiet act of self-sacrifice. Coating steel with zinc is called galvanizing, and the trick isn't just that zinc forms a barrier. Zinc is more electrochemically active than iron, so when moisture gets in, the zinc corrodes first and the steel underneath is spared. Engineers call this a sacrificial anode: the zinc gives itself up to save the iron. Even if the coating gets scratched and bare steel shows through, the surrounding zinc keeps corroding preferentially and protects that exposed spot. That's why a galvanized fence can stand in the weather for decades. The zinc is slowly disappearing on purpose, taking the rust that would otherwise eat the steel.

12.3 mi away

The Town That's Named After a Metal RoadyGoat

1890

Here's a town that is exactly what it says on the label. Zinc, in eastern Boone County, sits in the heart of the north Arkansas zinc district, and it took its name straight from the silvery ore dug out of these Ozark hills. Elias Barham claimed the land around 1890 and opened a general store; a post office followed in 1900, and when the White River Railway pushed a line through in 1903, the mines boomed. The town incorporated on March tenth, 1904. Prices ran high through the first two decades of the century, peaking during World War One. When that war ended and the Depression hit, zinc prices collapsed and the shafts went quiet. The name stayed, a one-word receipt for what once came out of the ground.

12.4 mi away

Buffalo National River

1972

America's first national river, designated in 1972, flowing 135 miles through the Ozark Mountains of northern Arkansas with towering bluffs, caves, and clear water.

15.1 mi away

Yellville, Arkansas

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The Metal Behind Your Sense of Taste RoadyGoat

The Metal That Dies So Steel Won't Rust RoadyGoat

The Town That's Named After a Metal RoadyGoat

Buffalo National River

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