The month’s site article is leaving New York again and is headed for the Piedmont region of North Carolina. No, not because it is necessarily warmer there, although it probably is, but because I am the editor and I decided it would. But seriously, who doesn’t like pyrite cubes and when I discovered some in a bucket in the Weiler’s barn/club workshop last month I asked where they were collected. Turns out they came from the Standard Mineral Company Mine in Glendon, North Carolina. WCGMC had ventured south on at least two occasions (2009 and 2010) to dig pyrite on trips organized by the Mountain Area Gem and Mineral Association (M.A.G.M.A.) of North Carolina.
It sounded like an excellent opportunity to revisit some club history. And then I got really lucky. A visit to the M.A.G.M.A. website yielded photographs from those trips and bingo there was Bill Chapman in his orange collecting uniform holding up a 2” pyrite cube for all to see. The gentleman just behind his right shoulder is Bill Lesniak. I considered this is clear proof that they had actually made the trip south and I set off to learn something about the mine.
Do you know the most common mineral in planet earth? Quartz? Nope. Feldspar? Nope. Ah, you say: All that limestone, the answer must be calcite. Wrong again. OK, you think it is a trick question. Maybe it is ice with all the polar ice sheets. Nice try, ice is a mineral, but not correct.
What if I told you this mineral cannot be collected anywhere and that it was not officially named until last year even though it comprises ~38% of the earth by volume. Why, you might ask? How about because no one had been able to find a sample to analyze? Are you catching on?
The newly christened mineral is bridgmanite. For a long time, scientists have known that a significant portion of the earth’s lower mantle is a very dense magnesium-iron silicate mineral. However, lacking a sample they could not characterize the material and without crystal structure information it could not be properly studied and named.
I wrote this note for the Feb-April 2015 issue of the Rochester Philatelic Association newsletter, Hinges and Tongs
The picture above is the Hope Diamond, which was recently acquired by the Rochester Philatelic Association. OK, that second part is fiction, but there are two bits of interesting philatelic news related to this famous gem.
Did you know that the Smithsonian Institute obtained the Hope Diamond in November of 1958 when New York City jeweler Harry Winston donated the famous gem. He hoped the donation would stimulate further donations and lead to a world quality gem exhibit. It did. You knew all that? OK, but do you know how the stone was sent from New York to Washington D.C.? Turns out Mr. Winston wrapped the stone in brown paper and shipped one of the world’s most famous and valuable gemstones via USPS registered mail. The shipment, with insurance, cost him $145.29, of which only $2.44 was for postage. The Hope Diamond was then valued at 1 million dollars. Below is the envelope used with the meters and auxiliary markings.
This remarkable Auxiliary Marking envelope is now on display at the National Postal Museum in DC.
The Hope diamond is one of the most recognized and well known jewels in the world. At 45.52 carats (9.104 grams), the 1” by ¾” pear-shaped blue jewel is currently valued at more than 200 million dollars. From its undocumented discovery in India in the 17th century (or before), the diamond has seen owners in India, France, and Britain before coming to the United States early in the 20th century. It has been re-faceted on several occasions to improve quality and luster. The gem has resided in the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History since 1958, when Harry Winston, a jeweler from New York City, donated the famous gem with the hopes it would stimulate further donations. It did and the National Gem Gallery at the Smithsonian is a must visit for anyone trekking to Washington D.C.
“Site of the Month” article for Dec. 2014 WCGMC News
You can call it the Gouverneur Talc Company No. 4 Quarry, you can call it the Valentine Mine, or you can just call it that quarry off route 3 south of Harrisville, NY. Regardless of the name, in the business of wollastonite, the small quarry/mine in extreme northern Lewis County is pretty important. Together with the Lewis Mine of Essex County (see Feb 2014 entry on this website), the two quarries provide all of the US production (and 10% of the world’s supply) of the industrial mineral wollastonite.
As an operating quarry, the site is not generally conducive for collecting, however one of the field trips associated with the New York State Geologic Symposium this past October included a two hour stop and a visit to the quarry floor (Robinson and Chamberlain, 2014). Steve Chamberlain and George Robinson led the trip and given their past work on the mineralogy of the locale (Chamberlain et. al., 1999), those of us who participated learned a lot in the brief time we were there. Continue reading Valentine Deposit, Harrisville, NY→
The leaves were changing (and even falling), but that did not deter a group of WCGMC folks from making a fourth trip to St. Lawrence County in late September. This time we were joined by 16 undergraduate geology majors from SUNY-Plattsburgh and their professor Dr. Mary Roden-Tice. It was truly wonderful to see so many young and eager folks enjoying geology and a day of collecting. The brilliant sun and the absence of mosquitoes did not hurt either.
Half of the SUNY-Plattsburg students have gathered near the top of the original Rose Road skarn site. Sky blue apatite has been spotted.
Four of us (Linda Schmidtgall, Bill Chapman, Ken St. John, Fred Haynes) decided one summer trip to eastern Ontario was simply not enough and we returned for 4 days in early September. The highlight was a return to the Miller Property in Eganville, but we managed to squeeze three other sites into the trip, including a pair of lesser known sites in the Bancroft Chamber of Commerce 2013 collecting book.
We started with a visit to the well known Beryl Pit in Quadeville. Fred had visited with the Rochester Club in July and since that time the owners (Dave and Renee Paterson) had excavated a significant amount of material in the floor of the pegmatite quarry and piled it outside the quarry. This made for easy pickings for beryl, quartz, tourmaline (var. schorl), cleavlandite, albite, perthite, fluorite, and euxenite. We later learned that we may have taken more than our limit on that last one. Keep reading to learn why!
Article I wrote as “Site of the Month” in WCGMC News, Oct., 2014
Fine Minerals or Minerals in Fine, NY?
This will be a short report on a small occurrence. And, perhaps this will be even longer than it truly deserves. But we cannot expect gem tourmaline, perfect fluorites, or complete trilobites at all our favorite haunts.
Nestled in a depression just off the intersection of Rte. 3 and Rte 58 in Fine, NY is an interesting occurrence of very coarse grained pyroxene (presumably diposide, but possibly augite) and potassium feldspar. There is associated calcite suggesting that the mineralization may have a skarn origin, but the outcrop exposures don’t appear to permit an unequivocal geologic explanation for the very coarse grained open space filling mineralization.
Who knows the most significant event of 1982? Could it be:
The Epcot Center opens in Orlando, Florida
Britian overcomes Argentina in the Falklands.
Chariots of Fire wins Oscar for Best Picture.
MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imagery) makes its medical debut.
Wrong, wrong, wrong and wrong. The most significant event in 1982 was when the International Commission on Mineral and Mineral Names (CNMMN) adopted the name titanite and discredited the mineral name sphene. Unlike those other events, the impact was immediate and worldwide. OK, maybe a few of you missed the event, but now you know.
WCGMC flirted with titanite collecting all summer. Perhaps not as infamous as the cry “It must be an amphibole”, but “ooh, it’s another titanite” was commonly heard in the field this summer.
Some 30 years ago, Herkimer County decided that the annual flooding and requisite road repair on Jerusalem Road (Co. Rd 16) south of Ilion was not worth the cost and effort and a one mile section of the road was permanently closed. In the 30 years hence, the road has been washed out repeatedly and is now a mere paved path in the woods. In fact, there is not much left of the old road (note the asphalt along the right side of the cover photo).
About half way along this section of road there is a series of springs which exit the shale that is exposed in the gully. At this point fractures in the shale have been partially filled and coated with travertine (a form of calcite). Varying in color from yellow to orange to various shades of brown this material has become a favorite of local collectors. Our club has generally scheduled an annual trip to this location. This year nine of us visited on June 24th and were not disappointed.
Wonderful weather and a glorious suite of minerals greeted the eleven WCGMC members who spent 5 days and 4 July nights camping and collecting in the Bancroft, Ontario area.
The group did not let moss grown under their collecting feet. After setting up camp on Monday afternoon, it was off to the Graphite Road outcrop north of town for tremolite and biotite and our first set of mosquito bites. As a small and readily accessible roadcut listed in the 2013 Bancroft Chamber of Commerce collecting site book, this site is heavily visited, but we still found it worthy of an hour or two of dedicated digging and collecting and quite a few pounds of tremolite and biotite went back to the campsite for cleaning and packing. Back at the campsite we enjoyed Eva Jane’s chicken casserole and dreamed of the huge apatites and titanites to come.
Article I wrote for the June-July, 2014 WCGMC News
SELLECK ROAD, POWERS FARM
On June 21-22, the WCGMC returned to St. Lawrence County for more mineral fun. Green growth now obscured the rocks a bit and mosquitoes and black flies greeted the 19 club members who arrived at Selleck Road in Pierrepont on Saturday morning. The two day trip would also include the Powers Farm and two sites where Pierrepont ZCA zinc ore has been stockpiled for road use (or perhaps for collectors?).
Twenty-three WCGMC members converged on Star Lake, NY on the morning of Saturday May 31st for a visit to Benson Mines. We found lots of sillimanite, some fresh, some altered a pretty light green, lots and lots of magnetite including small crystalline surfaces along with massive ore, and huge muscovite books. Jerry Curcio explored ahead a bit at the north end of the property and found an orange calcite boulder that contained large green crystals that appeared to be sillimanite. We later confirmed that identification with Marian Lupulescu. For more on Benson Mines see his paper in the Rocks and Minerals February, 2014 issue or go back to our Feb. 2014 newsletter where it was highlighted as the Site of the Month.
Green sillimanite offset in orange feldspar, a very pretty combination.
In mid-afternoon it was on to Fine, NY for a quick stop at the skarn outcrop just off the parking area at the intersection of highways 3 and Highway 58. Steve Chamberlain has proclaimed the coarse grained pyroxene (diopside?) and feldspars from this location to be “aesthetically challenged”, but that did not prevent us from scavenging a few for our gardens or collections. Etched and dull, these large dark green pyroxenes and their long and varied cleavage surfaces may not end up in too many mineral display cases, but they can look nice in a garden or on a patio wall.
A small, but hardy group of five Rochester Academy of Science mineral enthusiasts spent their Memorial Day weekend collecting minerals and mosquito bites in the Bancroft District of Ontario, the self-proclaimed mineral capital of Canada. Dick and Jeanne Phillips, Mario and Debbie Errico, and me made the 5 hour trip around Lake Ontario to Wilberforce and Bancroft for a whirlwind 3 days of rockhounding in the famous district. Dick led the group to 8 separate sites, including a night dig with black lights at the CN rock pile right in Bancroft.
Article I wrote for “Site of the Month” in May 2014 WCGMC News
Technically, Mount Pleasant Mills is not in New York, but I am going to claim editor’s license to divert this month’s “Site of the Month” south of the border and to invoke multiple sites. You see, on April 12th and 13th, thirteen Wayne County Club members gathered up their passports and headed south across the border in search of warmer weather and mineral/fossil treasure. We found both!
With temperatures well into the 70’s, the group converged on National Limestone Quarry in Mount Pleasant Mills where we were cheerfully greeted by the quarry owner Eric Stahl, who had cleared the road to the ridge atop the quarry in anticipation of our visit. Up we went, backing in the final section until we were all lined up adjacent to one of the wavellite spots atop the hill and collecting commenced (see cover photo).
An article I wrote for the April, 2014 WCGMC News (www.wcgmc.org)
ALL TOURMALINES ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL
When we venture to Ace of Diamonds to dig clear quartz crystals we are seeking a very simple mineral, silicon dioxide (SiO2). Just simple SiO4 tetrahedrons joined together with each large oxygen atom shared by two small silica atoms in a six-sided prism, ideally terminated by 6-sided pyramids. And when we seek that elusive fluorite at the annual Walworth Quarry dig, it is just calcium and fluorine combined into a cubic lattice motif with Ca atoms centrally located and F at the corners. This time each of the 8 fluorine corner cube atoms are shared by four unit cells with the formula CaF2. In both minerals inclusions generate color variations which get neat names (like amethyst or citrine). Of course, quartz can twin or show spectre form, but there is no elemental substitutions of note into the lattice of either mineral, and there are no solid solutions to confuse collectors: just simple SiO2 or CaF2, just quartz and fluorite.
It is not as simple with tourmaline. When we travel north to St. Lawrence County to collect dravite at Powers Farm, or fluor-uvite at Bush Farm or Selleck Road we are focusing our attention on one of the most complex mineral structures known. The mineral lattice of tourmaline actually has five structural sites where elements can be swapped and traded, six if you count the rare substitutions of aluminum or boron into the Si site. These substitutions can be complete or partial, and often occur in zonal patterns such that the center of the crystals actually may qualify as distinct minerals from their outside layers.
Mineral collectors appreciate the golden amber grossular garnet and green diopside offset by the brilliant white of the matrix wollastonite. Students of SUNY-Plattsburg learn about contact metamorphism from Dr. Mary Roden-Tice during field trips to the locale. Economic geologists appreciate the mine as one of only two active wollastonite producing mines in the United States, both of which are in New York State (the Valentine Mine near Harrisville is the second). But to many New Yorkers, the Lewis Mine of Willsboro Township in Essex County, New York went about its annual production of about 60,000 tons of wollastonite (~10% of the world’s production) in quiet anonymity.
Occupying an east-west ridge just south and parallel to Selleck Road in West Pierrepont this location has been collected for decades. The main part of the ridge is on state land and accessible without much walking, thereby adding to the popularity of the site. Tremolite is everywhere, tourmaline (v. uvite) is much more localized along the ridge. Both the light green tremolite and the uvite is typically etched and non-gemmy, however isolated pockets of very gemmy material has been found.
Have you driven Route 3 in southern St. Lawrence County? Did you know that as you pass just east of the small hamlet of Star Lake you are just hundreds of feet south of what was once the largest open pit iron mine in the world? That’s right, in 1958, during the height of its life, the Benson Mines open pit iron mine held that lofty title. The pit was 4 kilometers long, 250 meters across and 400-600’ deep. Today the pit is host to a whole lot of brilliant blue water and the surrounding Adirondack Park region is forest covered and virtually pristine wilderness.
The high concentration of iron in the rocks of the region was first recognized in 1810 when engineers surveying for a military road found their compasses wandering. But until the timber industry built a railroad to the region the iron ore could not be exploited. Even with rail, the area was still remote and from 1890 to 1940 mining was sporadic and limited. In 1941, Jones and Laughlin Steel Company leased the properties and constructed plant facilities. Continue reading Benson Mines, Star Lake, NY→
Retired, collecting minerals and stamps, growing flowers and vegetables, and when the spirit moves, toying with technology
