Rusty James: King of Ajoite and Papagoite

Cornerstone Minerals is a rock and gem shop at the corner of Lexington and Walnut in the heart of Asheville, North Carolina. It sells a variety of minerals, fossils, home decor, jewelry and metaphysical merchandise. At first glance it appears to be a tourist shop, but behind the scenes and in the back are several cases of far more notable minerals and fossils. They are the inventory of two additional and more specialized businesses: Throwin' Stones and Sacred Earth. Each year during the first two weeks of February, the two enterprises share space at the Tucson City Center Hotel (formerly Inn Suites) at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show. It is mobbed with serious and seasoned high-end mineral collectors.

The principal item attracting this crowd is the extensive selection of quartz crystals bearing inclusions of the rare and the colorful copper silicates ajoite and papagoite. Such crystals occur exclusively at a single locality in the world, namely an open pit mine in Messina, Limpopo Province, South Africa. Otherwise, the New Cornelia Mine near Ajo in Pinal County, Arizona is the type locality and was long the only locality for both ajoite and papagoite. Even at the New Cornelia Mine, the two minerals are rare, and rather than as inclusions in quartz crystals, both minerals occur in micro-crystals on matrix. They are easily differentiated by color; ajoite is sky blue, papagoite is bright blue. Their presence inside quartz crystals at Messina turned up sporadically between 1970 and 1991. Mineralogists around the world were amazed at an occurrence both so unlikely and so aesthetically pleasing. However, between 1991 and 2007, no new material was uncovered. Dealers horded much of what was available and brought limited quantities to market each year as prices increased at about ten per cent annually.

Then, unexpectedly in 2007, hand digging in a different and relatively shallow part of the mine caused several tunnels to collapse to reveal more included crystals. This area of the mine had been worked for copper in the 1950's before the identification of ajoite and papagoite in quartz crystals. Apparently the miners had encountered the included quartz crystals, but ignored them and dug deeper to reach ore that was richer and readily extractable. They left behind several pockets where the clarity and concentrations of ajoite and papagoite in the crystals therein had rarely been observed in the finds from several decades before.

Rusty James, who owns Throwin' Stones with his wife Nicole, could at first seem an unlikely persona for being a major player in the distribution of such crystals. He quickly refers to himself as a "musical artist" who plays exotic percussion and notes that Nicole is a visual artist. Rusty grew up in Rockville, Maryland, mostly unaware that Hunting Hill even existed. He later moved to Florida. After a trip to India, he "fell in love with stones." A perception that people in Florida"were only interested in fossils" was one reason for moving to Asheville. Its location was more central to his network of family and friends , plus it was a place with "more history and inherent interest regarding minerals."

Soon after Throwin' Stones opened, Rusty purchased a collection with 40 specimens of papagoite included quartz crystals just as they were becoming nearly extinct on the market. He surmises his profit on that purchase to have been approximately one thousand per cent over a five year span of selling them slowly. Since then, he's been to Messina four times to purchase crystals from the owner of the mine. During his most recent visit this past December, he believes he became the first American to be given permission to dig.


The conditions are brutal. With the crystals occurring in small pockets and veins in brecciated quartz, Rusty says it's possible to work all day in temperatures as high as 115 F, while contending with bugs, snakes, and scorpions, only to find a few broken pieces with small spots of color. Once extracted, many of the crystals bear a thick crust that can require not only multiple cleanings with oxalic and sometimes hydrofluoric acid, but also extensive manual work including using an air abrasive or high-power water spray.

The Messina crystals comprise approximately 20 per cent of Throwin' Stones' business. While Rusty doesn't get all of the material coming out of Messina, he believes that he is the source for the vast majority of the the "best" crystals on the market. He also mentions that the quality of most of the crystals being mined today is far superior to those collected between the 1970's and the 1990's. However, because of high operating costs and low yield, he voices concerns over how much longer the mine will continue to produce. He says that the mineralized zones are small and that they run deep into the ground at an angle that could preclude mining the crystals for much longer. In the near future he anticipates that the supply could dry up, leaving the market once again to rely on diminishing amounts of stockpiled material for which prices will continue to rise.

Rusty can keep you posted. You can contact him at "omrhythm at hotmail dot com."

Maryland's Good Old Days Recalled in Tucson

Dr. Joseph F. Schreiber, Jr. is one of but a few collectors still around who enjoyed the kind of pickings that were available in Maryland during the first half of the last century. Such collectors who became geologists were mostly lured to a myriad other locations around the country or the world. Many, regardless of vocation, have passed on. Dr. Schreiber and his wife Doris have been living for the past 50 years in Tucson. That is when he joined the Department of Geology faculty at the University of Arizona in 1959. He retired, more or less, in 1992.

The permanent move out west actually came about after thirteen years. After serving in the U.S. Navy for 35 months during World War II, he used the G.I. Bill to earn his B.A. (1948) and M. A.(1950) degrees in Geology from the Johns Hopkins University. Summer jobs with the U.S. Geological Survey in New Mexico and petroleum geology field studies in the Rockies and West Texas added to his academic experience. In 1951, he worked at the Chesapeake Bay Institute in a combined study of the waters and bottom sediments of the Bay. The expertise learned in the bay studies led to a Doctoral Program at the University of Utah where his research was on the sedimentary record of Great Salt Lake. "But all along," says Dr. Schreiber " I kept up an interest in mineral collecting." The time in Utah allowed for "classic" collecting opportunities in that state as well as Colorado.

Similarly attractive collecting opportunities came up when he served on the geology faculty at the Oklahoma State University in Stillwater from 1955-1959. The father of one of his students operated a small lead-zinc mine in the Tri-State district of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri. Whenever they struck a highly mineralized area, Dr. Schreiber was contacted so as to be on site to collect some of the beautifully crystallized minerals. Another bonus was helping to run the summer geology field camp located near Canon City, Colorado. Some weekends were spent with smaller groups of students collecting from some of the famous localities in central Colorado. What could have been better?

The permanent move "out west" came about when he, wife Doris, and two small daughters moved to Tucson. He was now in a rapidly growing soft rock (stratigraphy and sedimentology) program. The University of Arizona also had one of the best "ore deposit geology" programs in the U.S. Once again he was active in the summer geology field camp. What could have been even better?

Even so, after having experienced the best of so many great localities throughout the American West, Dr. Schreiber makes a point of referring to Maryland as "beautifully situated with igneous and sedimentary rocks and their metamorphosed equivalents, particularly where gneiss and metagabbros are present."

His interest in mineralogy and mineral collecting began in 1938 at the Natural History Society of Maryland as a member of the Junior Division. Charles "Charlie" Ostrander, who authored "Minerals of Maryland" in 1940 (still my personal Maryland Bible), was his mentor. Dr. Schreiber began collecting in the Baltimore area where he and other mineral collecting friends could travel on the Baltimore Transit street cars. Before the Woodberry Quarry dumps in the Jones Falls Valley gave way to progress, he recalls the collecting as having been "great!" From nearby, a street car ran north on Falls Road to points from which both the Bare Hills Copper mine dumps as well as the Bare Hills Chrome pits were but a short hike away. The vial of magnetite crystals from the former locality pictured in a vial at right are the largest I've ever seen from that locality. In the vicinity of the chrome pits, he recalls finding the best variety of minerals when combing the surrounding serpentine barrens, many of which remain accessible today.

Localities further north in Baltimore County were reached by car. A favorite was the Harry T. Campbell Quarry, now the Texas LaFarge Quarry, in Texas, MD. This is where he collected a specimen of wernerite, a mineral long considered to be an uncommon prize amongst Maryland collectors. It shows more attractively than any other Maryland wernerite I've had the privilege of seeing and is pictured at left.

The youthful Dr. Schreiber and his cronies were able to experience numerous still active quarries in a manner that collectors today could only dream about. If blasting were to happen on a Friday, the quarry was usually available to collectors on the weekends. Such a quarry was the long closed and inaccessible Gunpowder Quarry, which produced the almandine garnet pictured at right. The quarry workers would sometimes leave baskets of garnets that popped out of the gneiss left at their change shack. Dr. Schreiber also collected the allanite in gneiss (left) at the Gunpowder Quarry. Although allanite has been reported from various Maryland localities, this is the first piece I've seen and had an opportunity to photograph.

West of the Baltimore area in Carroll and Frederick Counties, Dr. Schreiber also got to visit many of the dumps and openings on private land where, mostly in the 1800's, copper and other metals were mined. The landowners became their friends and welcomed them. Many of these spots have since been built or paved over. Where possibilities for collecting remain, a much smaller percentage of landowners are as willing to so readily accommodate today.

The minerals pictured in this post are among the very few that Dr. Schreiber has kept since retiring. Most specimens were added years ago to the teaching collections and the University of Arizona Mineral Museum, which has stored them away. I would love to see and photograph some of them. However, immediately after the opening of a major new exhibit, with limited funding, and with the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show going on, this isn't the time to ask.

Tucson Ramblings

Shown above are the Moroccan tents, hardly a highlight of the action in Tucson during these first two weeks of February. About as many dealers from Czechoslovakia, Australia, Russia, Brazil---and even more from China and India--- haul tons of rocks to a variety of Tucson spots every year. I don't understand how most of them make their numbers work. The Moroccans bring the same stuff every year: flats of cerussite with barite, goethite, aragonite, azurite, vanadinite, and plenty of fossils. Though the quality of the specimens in these tents doesn't seem to improve from year to year, the persistence of the dealers endures, and the haggling can be endless if one hangs around. For the wire silver piece at right, I chiseled a Moroccan dealer down from $250 to $80, then walked away. With a bit of tarnish, I would have been less concerned about the possibility that the specimen could be factitious.

This year, as every year, the quantities of pyrite from Peru amethyst from Uruguay, stibnite from China, and Indian zeolites are as ubiquitous as the Moroccan material. These, however, are not the only species that are particularly abundant. This year, for the first time, we're seeing a lot of very aesthetic blue apatite crystals in a calcite matrix from Slyudyanka near Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia such as shown at left. The amount of dioptase crystals from Altyn-Tybue kazakhstan like those pictured at right, not to mention the number of dealers selling them is yet more remarkable.

Quite auspiciously, I've scored some uncommon native metals this year at very reasonable prices. One example is native iron (shown at left) from Hungtukun massif, Taymyr Peninsula, Siberia, Russia. My source was Mikhail Anasov, whom I'm confident would not have sold it to me as native iron were it from a meteorite. Even harder to come by is native lead, of which I was fortunate enough to obtain for $20 the specimen pictured at right from Garpenberg, Sweden. And speaking of rare, how about native osmium, specifically the variety "iridosmine," of which 30 or more grains, none much larger than a needle point are mounted on a piece of cork in the microphotograph at left? They were sifted from the Crescent City Beach placers in Del Norte County, California. The dealer who sold them to me has a noteworthy variety of unusual offerings .

I'll be interviewing this dealer on Monday, Feb. 8, for what promises to be a fascinating post. It should be on line before the end of February.

Arriving in Tucson

The point was getting to Tucson (by car from Baltimore) as early as possible. Early brings not only the greatest selection of quality material and new finds, but curiously the most forgiving numbers on numerous price tags. Friday, Jan. 29 marked the beginning of the "satellite" shows that start up two weeks before "The Big Show" at the Tucson Convention Center from Feb. 11-Feb. 14. While plenty of choice minerals at dirt cheap prices will still be around as all the hoopla concludes in two weeks, many of the best will cost more after passing through many hands over the next two weeks. Plenty else could go down in price by then, especially second rate material from dealers less than enthusiastic about packing it all up and shipping it home.

I first visited the biggest of these early shows, which as in past years was happening at Hotel Tucson City Center, formerly known as Inn Suites, St. Mary's and Granada. About half its 600 or so dealers were up and running by Friday, many more by Saturday. Though most sell minerals, a large minority do fossils or gems. As always, prices cover the map. The mood seemed upbeat relative to last year, when many dealers lost money because of the economy.

From the "Inn Suites," I headed to the Executive Inn at 333 West Drachman. In past years, dealers have occupied most rooms here, but not this year. Among the few who were set up , one from China sold me two wonderful hematite/quartz pieces for a fraction of what I would have expected.

The adjacent Minerals and Fossil Marketplace at West Drachman and Oracle appeared much as it did last year, with most of the same dealers in the same spots. Rock Deco had a couple flats of minerals from the Mammoth St. Anthony's Mine in Tiger from which I took delight in purchasing an affordable ($45) hand specimen of caledonite with leadhillite for my personal collection.

The Quality Inn at 625 E. Benson Highway is not to be missed. Most of the dealers hail from outside the United States, especially China, India, Russia, and Pakistan. Just about all the Chinese dealers were charging ridiculously high prices, having not yet figured out what the market would bear. But you will also find here Mikhail Anosov, who offered better values than I've observed in years from any of the myriad Russian dealers who annually descend upon Tucson. For aficionados of rare minerals, Germany's Gunnar Farber is a must visit at the Quality. All of Gunnar's minerals are mounted in clear plastic cases with price tags that end with the number (8)---$28, $38, etc.

Farther east, another enormous and definitely worth a visit venue is Tucson Electric Park. Unlike so many other nearby locations that are devoted exclusively to jewelry, the mix here is a hodgepodge of endless rough material, yard rocks to die for (see top picture), and enough minerals to be worth checking out. One dealer has thousands of flats of material, mostly adamite, mimetite, and hemimorphite from the Ojuela Mine in Mapimi, Durango, Mexico.

Most important is that Tucson has it all, enough to provide copy for this Mineral Bliss blog and inventory for Jake's Minerals well into 2010. I encourage readers to travel here and get in on it. Accommodations are easier than ever. Right next door to the Quality Inn show, the flashing sign at Motel 6 touted rooms for $45.95 on Friday, although by Saturday, they'd been raised to $49.95. One can count on rooms being available in the Tucson area---most likely reasonably decent ones for less than a C-note---even on the weekend of the Big Show.

See You in Tucson

Mineral Bliss is preparing for the Tucson extravaganza and will resume in early February, 2010, soon after our arrival there.

Incidentally, to anyone who between Dec. 26, 2009 and Jan. 7, 2010, read the final Mineral Bliss post for 2009, which is actually the most recent post before this, please be aware that it's been edited to clean up excessive wordiness. The facts remain the same.

More Maryland Minerals from Harvard Museum

These days the "haydenite" with "beaumontite" label that accompanies the above picture would read chabazite (in blocky crystals) with heulandite (less recognizable). Haydenite is eponymous with Horace Hayden, an early 18th century dentist, who is credited with its discovery. Early literature depicts haydenite as "a variety of chabazite." Mindat refers to it as a "synonym of chabazite." An easy Internet search reveals a somewhat similar story regarding the nomenclature behind beaumontite/heulandite.

Collected a century plus ago, it hailed from the Harris quarry, one of several long forgotten and filled in filled-in gneiss openings in Baltimore City's Jones Falls Valley. Harvard Mineralogical Museum Curator Carl Francis explained to me in a letter how Harvard obtained this specimen in 1912 as part of the A. F. Holden collection. Holden had purchased it in 1911 for $3 from the legendary mineralogist (and collector/dealer) Lazard Cahn. In his catalog, Holden had described the $3 as "a fearful price for this specimen: bought on Cahn's recommendation." Prettier for sure, but tinier is the chabazite collected here as shown in the micro-photograph at right. It is part of Harvard's vast micromount collection.

Chromian clinochlore is another Maryland piece of note in the Harvard Mineralogical Museum's collection. It's nomenclature is more convoluted than haydenite/chabazite or beaumontite/heulandite. Harvard received both the hand specimen at left and the micromount at right with labels identifying them as nacrite from "Cecil County Maryland near Texas," located just over the state line in neighboring Pennsylvania.

Dr. Francis knew these could not be nacrite, which is a polytype of kaolinite. Because of the locality and purplish red color, he said he would be comfortable labeling them as chromian clinochlore, for which the name kammererite is a synonym. . A more obscure and all but forgotten name for the species is rhodochrome, as referred to in Minerals of Maryland by Ostrander and Price. This book reports rhodochrome both at Bare Hills and Soldiers Delight, also localities in Harford County. In describing the rhodochrome from Maryland's State Line Pits, assuming the pieces shown were collected there, Minerals of Maryland brackets rhodochrome to suggest it's synonymous with penninite. Mindat describes penninite as a pseudo-trigonal variety of clinochlore for which pennine, japanite and miskeyite are additional synomyms. From my photographs, I could not determine whether these crystals were pseudo-trigonal.

I suspect that at one time Harvard's nacrite labels were linked to specimens such as the kaolinite at left. It too, was collected in Cecil County, near Iron Hill, not far from the State Line Pits. Could this particular piece bear nacrite, particularly the brown material at center? The single related reference in the list of Maryland minerals originally sent me by Dr. Francis notes "kaolinite group."

A few other Maryland pieces impressed me as noteworthy. Fred Shaefermyer's flat of Hunting Hill minerals included several rare species including pokrovskite and McGuinnessite. Their photographs are absent here because specimens showing equally well are already in our Maryland Minerals web site's slide shows at Flickr and Picasa. Those slide shows will soon include, however, the Hunting Hill desautelsite image from Harvard's micromount collection as it's shown at right.

Another curiosity from the micromount collection was labeled pharmacolite from the Pinto Railroad Cut in Alleghany County. The 20x photograph at left is insufficient for visual identification. When I first mentioned pharmacolite to Maryland mineral guru Fred Parker, he referred to the occurrence of such a rare arsenate in Alleghany County or for that matter anywhere in Maryland as "just silly." Later after my visit when I emailed him an image, Parker noted that it looked very different from the New Jersey pharmacolite with which he was familiar. The proof, he added would be in an x-ray or EDS analysis, perhaps a worthy undertaking for a Harvard mineralogy scholar.

Another mineral at Harvard I personally had not previously seen from a Maryland locality was vivianite. The substantial specimen pictured at right reached Harvard from an unknown source and was collected at a road cut along Wheeler Road in Oxen Hill, Prince Georges County. The only other vivianite locality I'm aware of in Maryland is a bog at Greenbury Point in Anne Arundel County, where Minerals of Maryland reported an occurrence in grey clay.

Closing out our three post series about The Harvard Museum's Maryland minerals is an example of the species that inspired my original communication with Harvard, namely chromite---in crystals specifically. The micro-photograph at left shows a portion from a hand specimen of Bare Hills chromite from the main gallery cabinet above which a similar looking piece was displayed under glass. Next to the latter had been the glass dish of chromite (actually magnetite) crystals we questioned last summer. The sparkle in this hand specimen enticed me to shoot the macro-photograph at left just before leaving. Regardless of what may or may not have ever been reported of chromite crystals from Bare Hills, this picture suggests their presence. I pass, however, at any attempt to isolate them and place them in a dish.

So there you have it, not only for our Harvard series but for posts during 2009 to the Mineral Bliss Blog. Our best wishes go out to all readers for a happy, prosperous, and wonderfully rocky 2010.

Harvard Maryland Mineral Update

Mineral Bliss erred in the August 14 post when crediting the Harvard Mineralogical Museum with having but two Maryland minerals on public display. Clearly I neglected to read each of the hundreds of labels, particularly of species that failed to grab my attention or when not expecting to find Maryland minerals. In fact, five Maryland minerals were present.

We missed the humongous translucent lamellar talc that's pictured above. It's from an unnamed locality in Harford County. Harvard received it from an unknown source in 1875. Seeking clues regarding a more specific locality, I referred to my "Bible" for this sort of thing, Minerals of Maryland by Ostrander and Price( 1940, Natural History Society of Maryland). It noted an occurrence of "large green translucent sheets of talc" amidst the serpentine barrens surrounding Mine Fields. That would be my guess, but who knows?

Interestingly, the Museum's Curator Dr. Carl Francis also removed from the locked cabinet beneath the talc a well formed crystal of ilmenite about an inch in diameter. It was embedded in Harford County talc of a hue similar to that of the large sheet. Minerals of Maryland does not mention a locality in Harford County where both talc and ilmenite were known to occur. It does, however, note that in the vicinity of Dublin, the eminent early 19th Century mineralogist Earl Shannon reported ilmenite and garnets in "quartz-fuchsite." With hindsight, I find the resemblance between fuchsite (a variety of muscovite not often found in Maryland) and our talc to be interesting.

Coincidentally, one of the other Maryland pieces on display I missed in August was the ilmenite specimen at left from "near Dublin" in Harford County. It had reached Harvard through the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh. Undisplayed in the wooden cabinet beneath it was a similar looking ilmenite crystal, which had also been previously housed at the Carnegie Museum. Its original label showed Chester, Massachusetts, for the locality. Meanwhile, the first of two Harvard attribution labels accompanying it gave the locality as "unknown." A second more recent such label named Harford County's Dinning Rutile Prospect. Minerals of Maryland does not mention ilmenite as occurring at the Dinning Rutile Prospect. This seems curious considering the size of the that crystal, which is pictured at right.

I also overlooked a specimen of coalingite from Hunting Hill. The piece in the picture at left was not displayed in the gallery on either of my visits. Rather, it came from a flat of Hunting Hill minerals donated to Harvard by National Rockhound and Lapidary Hall of Famer Fred Shaefermeyer. Since it closely resembled the specimen in the gallery, I photographed it instead because of time restraints and for the sake of convenience.

Additional Maryland Minerals at the Harvard Mineralogical Museum

This week's post follows through on the August 14 and October 2 posts about minerals collected in Maryland on display in the Harvard Mineralogical Museum. The August post made the following assertion regarding undisplayed specimens stored in drawers:

With over 4,000 specimens from the Franklin, New Jersey environs, and 7,000 New England pieces, it’s likely that Harvard has additional Maryland minerals. What a treat the prospect of snooping through those drawers. Next visit, additional time will be available, and I'll have researched the protocol.

Such a visit happened this past week, the end result of correspondence regarding the Bare Hills chromite/magnetite controversy discussed in our October 2 post. Thank you again Harold Levey for egging me on to write that questioning letter to the Harvard Mineralogical Museum's esteemed Curator Dr. Carl Francis. Ultimately, it led to his being kind enough to spend the major portion of a busy day showing me where the minerals are kept and arranging for me to photograph the Maryland ones.

In addition to the few pieces displayed under glass in the Gallery, Dr. Francis removed other Maryland minerals locked beneath them in wooden cabinets. From a spacious lab and study area in the Museum's basement, he selected more Maryland pieces from the thousands of specimens in drawers surrounding the desk where he sits in our title picture. After making a special trip to another building where the micromount collection is kept, he walked with me across campus to a house where rows of floor to ceiling drawers filled with hand specimens line the basement. There he made several trips up a ladder to fetch those from Maryland, the most interesting of which we carried back to the museum in a shopping bag for me to photograph.

Upon leaving just before dark, it was clear to me the day's experience was to be a source of substantial content for future Mineral Bliss posts. How welcome to have this material to share during an upcoming six week period where Holidays and extensive travel could easily supersede the kind mineralogical pursuits covered at Mineral Bliss that are normally a routine part of my life. Here are a few likely topics.

• Maryland minerals on display in the Harvard Mineralogical Museum that were missed during our August visit.


• Maryland minerals of special interest that are not on display.


• Curious issues regarding the identification of several Maryland pieces.

Stay tuned.

A Classic Pennsylvania Calcite

The Mineral Bliss post from November 14, 2009, which described an escorted visit to the Delaware Mineralogical Museum, made the following statement: "I've deliberately refrained from mentioning one Pennsylvania specimen in particular to share its story as the sole topic of a future Mineral Bliss post."

It was the calcite specimen shown in the above picture from the Delta Carbonate Quarry, now known as the York Building Supply Quarry, in York, Pennsylvania. With a main crystal measuring about 4 1/2 inches across, I've never observed a more appealing example of this classic genre. Upon learning from the Delaware Mineralogical Museum Curator Sharon Fitzgerald that its original source was one of my favorite collector/dealers, I immediately decided to contact him.

Eric Meier of Wilmington, Delaware, is pictured at left behind tables of his inventory at the Delaware Mineralogical Society's show this past March. Trading as Broken Back Minerals, he was among the busiest dealers there. Likewise, at the September Gem Cutters Guild of Baltimore Show in the Howard County Fairgrounds, November's Roanoke Valley Gem and Mineral Show at the Salem,Virginia Civic Center, and other East Coast events. He carries substantial regional material. His prices are quite reasonable to begin with and become increasingly so for customers who purchase in quantity.

Eric informed me that a threesome also including his friends Bill Longacre and Joe Hoffman collected this magnificent calcite specimen together in 1993. They were at the bottom of the quarry when Hoffman noticed a small hole about 25 feet up a scalable slanted wall. By chiseling away at the brecciated limestone surrounding the hole, they succeeded in opening up a pocket completely lined with crystals. About eighteen inches high and ten to twelve feet wide, the pocket tapered back approximately eight feet. Once they'd opened the pocket, removing the crystals therein became more difficult. Limestone that was not brecciated surrounded them. The men shoved a blanket into the pocket to protect what crystals they could dislodge, then hammered and chiseled away. When finished, they agreed to divide the booty and rolled dice for first pick. Eric rolled a double six for the piece now in the Delaware Mineralogical Museum. It required minimal cleaning.

Skip Colflesh, whose ruizite find at Cornwall, PA, was the subject of the June 13 Mineral Bliss post, also collected large quantities of calcite at this York locality between 2000 and 2002 in the company of fellow legendary Pennsylvania collectors Bryon Brookmyer and Bob Weaver. Skip authored a well illustrated article about the genre that appeared in the September/October 2002 edition of Rocks and Minerals. In a recent Email to me, he mentioned "crystals up to ~8" and the subsequent discovery in 2003 of a pocket with even more diverse crystals.

The crystals are often twinned or stacked. Sometimes they appear ball-like. Their forms range from rhombs to prisms to scalenohedra. This diversity along with a distinctive orange/ honey/ amber coloration distinguishes them. Similar crystals have been collected at another nearby York Building Supply owned quarry known as the Thomasville Quarry. While both localities have been off-limits to collectors for years, plenty of calcite from them remain available on the market and grace both museums and personal collections.

Uncovering a Spectacular Maryland Specimen

The above pictured spessartite garnet atop schorl tourmaline is one of two Maryland specimens displayed in the University of Delaware Mineralogical Museum. As I photographed it, the Museum's curator, Dr. Sharon Fitzgerald, informed me that her husband, Dr. Peter Leavens, had dislodged it from a road cut near Elkton. How on earth did he do it, I wondered, and exactly where?

Dr. Leavens is currently Emeritus (retired) Professor of Geology at the University of Delaware, where he taught for 38 years. He was also Curator of the Mineralogical Museum from 1972 to 1997, and is married to the museum's present curator, Dr. Fitzgerald. At her bidding Dr. Leavens wrote up for me what happened. Here is his story:

On the official Maryland state highway map, Appleton is marked as the most northeasterly town site in the state, although there is nothing there except a convenience store at the crossroads where Appleton Road, connecting Elkton, MD and Kemblesville PA, crosses MD 273.

In the mid 1970s I was teaching at the University of Delaware and living in Kemblesville. My commute took me down Appleton Road and into Delaware on 273. One day in late summer I saw that a development road (now North Edgewood Drive) was being built off Appleton Road to the east, a few hundred yards north of the crossroads.

Scouting along the road, I found some large quartz boulders which had been plowed out of the roadbed and piled on the bank. The road had cut across a pegmatite, about four feet wide and at least as long as the road width. Judging from the limited outcrop exposed in the road, the pegmatite had an outer quartz-feldspar zone and a discontinuous quartz core; the boulders on the bank were pieces of the core. What got my attention were the crisp outlines of several black schorl tourmaline and tan microcline crystals embedded in the margins of the quartz core boulders.

I had my sledge hammer in the car, so I got it out and began beating on the quartz boulders, hoping to jar the crystals loose, and I was able to recover several tourmaline crystals and part of a microcline crystal. By far the best specimen is a 2.5" tall schorl capped by two 1" garnet crystals. One garnet, which had not been protected by the quartz, had crumbled almost completely away, but the other is a crisp trapezohedron. One corner of the tourmaline came out in several fragments and had to be repaired, but overall it is a beautiful specimen.

The bedrock geologic map of northern Delaware shows that the northwest corner of New Castle County, including part of Newark, contains abundant pegmatites. During the building of West Branch development in Newark in the 1990’s, a number of pegmatites were unearthed that produced schorl tourmaline, a few beryl crystals, and some small garnets. The Appleton occurrence is only about three miles west of West Branch and may be part of the same pegmatite swarm.

If so there may be other finds to be made in the northeast corner of Maryland. Unfortunately, both the Appleton and the West Branch pegmatites are covered, and no traces of them remain.

Contributed by

Dr. Peter Leavens

Minerals from the State of Delaware

Delaware surely must yield the least variety of mineral specimens of any other state in the US. That's because a coastal plain consisting of sand and sediment underlies most of it. Delaware's relatively few collectible minerals confine themselves to a diminutive tract of Appalchian Piedmont in the far northwest part of the state.

Delaware's State Mineral is sillimanite. The specimen shown beneath our title was collected at Brandywine Springs. A polymorph of kyanite and andalusite, gemologists refer to sillimanite when gemmy and transparent as fibrolite. I've also heard it called Delaware's State Gem. Give Delaware credit. Half the states in the US don't have a state mineral. Recognize them as well for its first class mineralogical society and the wonderful mineralogical museum at the University of Delaware.

Although the university of Delaware Mineralogical Museum has yet to exhibit Delaware minerals, next door at 257 Academy Street in the Delaware Geological Survey, a cabinet on the second floor features several impressive Delaware specimens. At top left are apatite crystals from Dixon's Quarry in Woodale. Below it are almandine garnet crystals from a no longer accessible locality beneath the homes of a Newark neighborhood known as West Branch. The beryl at top right is also from West Branch; so are the curved schorl tourmaline crystals pictured beneath it. In addition to showing me these minerals and allowing me to photograph them, Dr. Fitzgerald accommodated me similarly with other Delaware material in storage at the Museum.

With the West Branch locality extinct, Wilmington's Brandywine Quarry---not to be confused with the Brandywine Springs sillimanite locality---probably has Delaware's most extensive variety of minerals with 18 entries including 14 valid minerals noted in Mindat. The orange chabazite pictured at left especially impressed me among Brandywine Quarry minerals. Chabazite is one of four zeolites known to occur here along with stilbite, laumontite, and natrolite.

The stilbite pictured at left attracted my interest. It came from a road cut along I-95 near Naaman's Road. And the historic magnetite at right in a sheet of muscovite from Chandler's Hollow (Beaver Valley) in Newcastle County fascinated me. To see images of the the Delaware minerals shown in this post and other Delaware minerals that I photographed during my recent visit to the University of Delaware Mineralogical Museum, please follow the link to this set on my Flickr Site.

University of Delaware Mineralogical Museum: A Private Visit

As Delaware Mineralogical Museum Curator Sharon Fitzgerald removed the glass encasing this Jeffrey Mine vesuvianite for the photograph, it appeared to me to be as close to perfect as any mineral I ever encountered. Vesuvianite was the topic of Dr. Fitzgerald's doctoral thesis in mineralogy, and she was raving about it. This one room museum in Penny Hall on the University of Delaware campus displays a lot more priceless world class specimens than its small square footage would suggest. Although I typically could overlook a genre so common as dolomite, the specimen pictured at right from Navarre, Spain impressed me almost as much as the vesuvianite. Same for dozens of other pieces here, especially as Dr. Fitzgerald encouraged me to pause and contemplate them. She also noted that the serandite with analcime from Mt. Saint Hilaire, Quebec (top left) and the wire sliver piece shown below it from Zacatecas, Mexico, have graced cover pages of Mineralogical Record.


This personal tour followed an email I received from Dr. Fitzgerald responding to our June 6 Mineral Bliss post heralding the museum's reopening after a long period of closure for renovations. Inviting me to return, she spoke of the "amazing collection that is here and the possibilities that surround it." Since my earlier post was based on an all too quick walk-through, I enthusiastically accepted the offer.


The University of Delaware owns over 15 thousand specimens, about four thousand of which have yet to be catalogued. Its mission is to "display the best" and maintain ample material for study. Since twelve years have passed since the Museum's last targeted acquisitions, Dr. Fitzgerald is on the lookout for material from major recent finds, especially in China. She also plans to de-access hundreds of pieces the Museum doesn't need.


Among other plans is to assemble a display of regional minerals. Presently, about a dozen such specimens from neighboring states grace different cabinets as part of other suites or categories. Most are from Pennsylvania. I suspect that the French Creek chalcopyrite shown at top left and also the Woods Mine Brucite at top right are superior to any other of their genres these classic localities ever produced. The Cornwall andradite garnet at bottom right , which is in a visiting case provided courtesy of David Biers, is also amazing. I've deliberately refrained from mentioning one Pennsylvania specimen in particular to share its story as the sole topic of a future Mineral Bliss post. Of two Maryland specimens, the spessartite garnet on schorl tourmaline pictured beneath the chalcopyrite all but blew away this publisher of the Maryland Minerals website. Dr. Fitzgeralds's husband, Dr. Peter Leavens, who curated the Museum for a 25 year period beginning in the 1970's, collected it in a Cecil County roadcut near Elkton.

So what about Delaware minerals? Though Delaware is hardly a mineral collectors' haven, a few choice specimens including schorl tourmaline, spessartine garnet, and beryl are in a display cabinet next door at the Delaware Geological Survey, 257 Academy St. A wider selection of remarkable Delaware minerals is under lock and key in the basement of Penny Hall beneath the Musuem. I managed to photograph the best from both caches. You can see pictures and read about them in an upcoming post entitled The Minerals of Delaware.

Jonathan Ertman: Maryland's Mr. Hunting Hill Garnet

Jon Ertman's nickname, "Maryland's Mr. Garnet," recognizes him as the premier aficionado, collector, and dealer to specialize in the grossular garnets from Hunting Hill Quarry in Rockville. Hunting Hill garnets may well have become Maryland's best known and most sought after contribution to the mineral kingdom. Jon's role with them has evolved over the 37 years since he moved with his family as a pre-teen from upstate New York to Rockville. Already a rockhound, he found his way the several miles from his new home to Hunting Hill in a matter of days.

Jon surmises that he's collected at Hunting Hill a couple hundred times. "Before OSHA," he recalls, " you could just sign a waiver at the gate to go in and collect." Today the quarry grants access only by pre-arrangement at specified times exclusively with clubs and groups that carry insurance. Jon is an active member of both the Montgomery County Mineral Society and the Northern Virginia Mineral Society, which share Hunting Hill as their most popular field trip destination. No other Maryland locality yields such a wide variety of minerals, 69 at last count. Hunting Hill is the only Maryland locality for many of these species. Some, such as pokrovskite and xonotlite, rarely occur anywhere else in the world.

Jon also takes pride in his suites of minerals from such no longer accessible Northern Virginia localities as Centreville Quarry, Bull Run Quarry, Luck Quarry, Chantilly Quarry, and Goose Creek Quarry. His collection also holds an enormous quantity of worldwide minerals. They dominate the inventory he sells at regional swaps and shows, although he emphasizes that every mineral in his collection is for sale.

Notwithstanding, Jon's Hunting Hill grossular garnets reign supreme. Displays such as pictured at left are prominent in his sizeable basement. Hundreds of smaller pieces, including plenty of thumbnails, fill flats lining the wall. The crystals typically ocur in a serpentinite-rodingite matrix and sometimes associate with very attractive light green clinochlore crystals. Of all the Hunting Hill garnet pieces in Jon's collection, his favorite is the one pictured at right. For aesthetics and quality, he sees it as representing the best of a classic genre. He'll sell it for $1000. If that's too much for the budget, plenty of very attractive smaller pieces go for less than $10.

Jon has sent some of his Hunting Hill garnets to Thailand for faceting. He charges about $80 a carat for these cut stones and is in no big hurry to sell them. Yours truly may have been among the first to get in on this one. Pictured at right is my wedding ring, in the center of which a Hunting Hill garnet that Jon collected has replaced the original diamond. At present, it's one of but a very few jewelry items anywhere to feature such a stone.

However unusual my ring, I have yet to see any jewelry bearing Patuxent River agate. Maryland's legislature chose this alleged manifestation of silicified dinosaur bone a few years ago as the State's official gemstone. Confident that most Maryland jewelers, geologists, and members of the rockhound community agree with him, Jon Ertman proclaims they should have picked Hunting Hill garnets.

Jon can be reached at grossular9@live.com.