Remembering Larry Krause

Baltimore, Maryland lost its premier mineral dealer and a lot more with the June 2 passing of Larry Krause. Just about every local collector was both a customer and a friend. Dealing minerals was only one of the many hats Larry wore. Most of them extended far beyond the interests that bind us mineral people together. Regardless of the hat he was wearing, what most lingers in the memory is of Larry himself and the spirit that drove him. He was gentle, kind, opinionated, motivated by challenges, driven by ethics, civic-minded, cultural minded, good-humoured, and he had a great marriage.

Larry and I go back nearly 33 years, most of which had nothing to do with minerals. My earliest memory is when he as publisher and Alice as editor---they would marry five years later---engaged me as a writer for the Baltimore Chronicle. We spent many hours together over weeks, months, perhaps even a year before Larry mentioned that he collected minerals, which had been my hobby as a child. Soon thereafter, he took me to collect iridescent siderite at Arbutus Canyon along Washington Boulevard (long since paved over by Home Depot). As enjoyable as the experience was for me, a lifestyle encompassing two jobs, two children, and two acres precluded me from resuming this hobby that had been all but forgotten for 25 years.

Larry had a lot of other responsibilities as well during this period. They included publishing at least five community newspapers, two magazines, and a book. He also founded two nonprofits, and had prominent roles with more than several other organizations, among them the Baltimore Mineral Society, which he served at various junctures as secretary, vice president and president.
I stayed in touch with Larry, writing for four of his publications and serving on the boards of directors of two of them. In 1989, I began writing a weekly column entitled "Jake About Town" for the Chronicle. It related to everything that was offbeat about Baltimore's culinary scene.

"Jake About Town" became so much a part of my life that in 1992, I sold the home service brokering business which had been my livelihood for 21 years and launched a company to produce a line of extremely exotic canned soups. Though the soup business never made me rich, it replaced the worries associated with responsibility for thousands of jobs taking place in peoples' houses every year with a level of happiness and a sense of fulfillment I'd never before known. Were it not for Larry, this probably never would have happened, and I mention it only because of the role he played in getting me back into minerals, which became the next chapter.

During the final decade of his life, Larry gradually transitioned from publishing community newspapers to devoting more time to his mineral collection and Octahedron Minerals, the sideline business started years before. It wasn't long before the enormous two-room basement of his and Alice's house was filled with minerals from floor to ceiling. His personal collection was in one of the rooms, Octahedron's inventory in the other.

Around the time I sold the soup business in 2004, to earn more money in real estate and start thinking about retirement, Larry invited me to accompany him to a meeting of the Baltimore Mineral Society and encouraged me to purchase some minerals from him. By this time, I was telling people that minerals were "something to pursue when I get older." Though my life continued to be crammed with other commitments, Larry had soon sold me enough minerals to justify creating a space in the basement to display them. Shortly thereafter, the childhood passion that 45 years before had given way to sports, girls, and other adolescent distractions reinstated itself full force.

After learning that he had cancer, Larry began to sell off in earnest the inventory of Octahedron Minerals as well as his collection. He did so mostly by inviting specific collectors, usually in small groups, to come to the house and shop. Though receiving more than my share of invitations, and wanting to be there, I was out of town on most of these occasions, but recall all too clearly the one that I resisted. Our house already had more rocks in it than we had appropriate space for, and I wanted to see more of them moving out---a slow and tedious process when selling them on line---than coming in. How secondary that concern proved to be when realizing now the opportunity I missed to have had just a little more time hanging out with Larry.

An All But Forgotten Maryland Gypsum Find

Among the most spectacular mineral specimens known to have been collected in Maryland are the blades and rosettes of gypsum (referred to as selenite when crystallized) that have been plucked from clay along the St. Mary's River banks at Chancellors Point and at Fort Washington in Prince Georges County beneath the bluffs of the Potomac. Lesser known, arguably more spectacular, and all but forgotten are crystals collected approximately 50 years ago from a deposit near Fort Foote in Prince Georges County about three miles down river from Fort Washington. For the second recent Sunday afternoon, a row, I had the opportunity to accompany Jeff Nagy on another drive to Virginia, this time to Strasburg for further research on his project to update and republish the 1981 Maryland Geological Survey publication Minerals of the Washington, DC Area by Lawrence Bernstein. Specifically, his mission was to meet and learn about the find from Gary Allard, who with his brother Brian, now deceased, had discovered the deposit.

For its year and a half of productivity, the site was the secret domain the two brothers. Gary appears in our title picture holding a rosette and the most spectacular crystal blade of the find, which is the largest crystal of selenite I've ever seen from Maryland. Amazingly, its appearance suggests that it could once have been part of a rosette. It is the same crystal that Gary was photographed holding 49 years ago in an article entitled Crystals by the Ditchful that appeared in the June-July, 1961 edition of Rocks and Minerals . At present, we are awaiting permission from Rocks and Minerals new publisher to post a reproduction of that earlier picture. If granted, one will be inserted herein soon thereafter.

Over less than two years, the two brothers pretty much cleaned out most of the crystals, using some for a science project at school and selling a others to classmates. Then they notified Ellsworth Swift,who authored the article in Rocks and Minerals. By then, the ditch had become less a source of crystals than what Swift referred to as "a challenge to discover the nature of the deposit and a chance to speculate on its formation."

He noted in the article that the Fort Foote crystals occurred in the Patapsco Clay, which also hosted other gypsum finds reported from the region. He described this clay as formed in the Cretaceous Age and variegated (in colour). Gary Allard recalled that the crystals occurred in a a "purplish" clay that was darker than the crystal bearing Patapsco clay at nearby Fort Washington. The crystals that Gary and Brian collected, whether rosettes or single crystals, were generally larger and less stained by clay than most of the better known material collected at Fort Washington and in St. Mary's County.

Particularly interesting was that while riverside bluffs had yielded the Fort Washington and St. Mary's crystals, those from Fort Foote were collected about a half mile inland in a ditch intended for drainage alongside what was soon to be paved over as an extension of River Bend Road. Just as noteworthy was their confinement to a 125 foot section of the ditch. Swift suggested that this could mean the crystals "concentrated along structural features such as joints," or that this particular deposit was "irregular in shape with the ditch merely cutting a cross section through the crystal patch.'" He explained further how the crystals were most likely formed when groundwater from the Piedmont that contained sulfuric acid from decomposing pyrite flowed eastward and mixed with the lime bearing beds of the Coastal Plain at Fort Foote.

Gary Allard now lives in the Shenandoah Valley near Strasburg, Virginia. He said he moved there because it had more kinds of rocks than than "that boring Coastal Plain" where he grew up." He still loves to collect minerals and prior to his recent retirement was a jeweler and metal engraver. One of his recent finds that amazed Jeff and me was the green quartz crystal pictured at right from near Front Royal in Warren County, Virginia. The book Minerals of Virginia, by R.V Dietrich, 1991, noted nothing like it from Warren County. The only green quartz the book mentioned was presumably massive and from another part of Virginia with coloration "probably due to included amphibole or chlorite." It too, Gary discovered along the side of a dirt road albeit not in a ditch.

Collecting at the Havre de Grace Quarry

Hats off to the Vulcan Materials Company/Arundel Corporation, except for hard hats that is. Assistant Plant Manager Patrick Pieton couldn't have been more gracious when he opened up the Havre de Grace Quarry on a recent Saturday for Baltimore Mineral Society members to collect.

The quarry descends from 670 acres immediately south of the Susquehanna River and west of Havre de Grace at a point where the Port Deposit gneiss meets Harford County's metagabbro and amphibolite. It is visible off to the right as one drives north across the Susquehanna on I-95. Although the rocks are hard, they bear plenty of mineral specimens that are relatively easy to collect.

After an informative briefing from Pat about the quarry and mine safety, we followed him in our cars down several levels to collect along berms on either side of road. Sulphides proved to be abundant in the rocks here, especially pyrite in large masses and sometimes in cubes up to at least an inch. Unfortunately these crystals were impossible to extract from the much harder gneiss and metagabbro encasing them. Often associated with the pyrite were less sizeable masses of bright yellow golden chalcopyrite sometimes accompanied by wildly iridescent bornite. One of the more interesting finds was a sizeable mass of pyrrohotite running through a matrix bearing few small particles of what through the loupe appeared to be crystalline sphalerite.

Excitement increased when Fred Parker found a large boulder partially coated with a druse of clear colorless zeolites. Through the loupe, we were able to identify heulandite for sure, and very possibly some chabazite as well. The druse, however, was of a different hue than a particularly attractive 1988 heulandite find by Parker where the micro crystals were orangish brown and occasionally accompanied by slightly larger crystals of white calcite.

Collecting only got better when Pat reappeared to lead us to the bottom level of the quarry. Within minutes we were in the midst of numerous rocks coated with heulandite druses of similar hue to those from the 1988 find. Although mostly quite weathered, occasional scatterings of micro pyrite cubes contributed a dramatic sparkle to some of them. The image at right was shot at 40x.

Also present at the same spot were some rocks covered with bladed sprays of white laumontite. After whacking one of them with my mallet, two attractive small cabinet sized slabs broke off to expose laumontite on both sides. Nearby, Bob Eberle pounded away at a boulder from which he ultimately extracted an attractive epidote crystal of approximately an inch. As abundant as epidote is likely to be in this kind of rock, it was the only such find of the day.

As our noon deadline approached, Fred Parker wondered off to what was probably the day's piece de resistance. Quite apart from where we'd been collecting, it was an enormous boulder he'd spotted soon after our arrival at the bottom level. The druses of orange heulandite covering it were less weathered. After pounding away at the boulder with a sledge hammer he inserted a small chisel at a point where one crystal coated slab after another soon detatched. As he wrapped the pieces in newspaper and placed them into a compartmentalized flat, several of us ran off in yet another direction from the spot where we'd spent nearly all of the past two hours. Almost too much heulandite, it seemed, not enough time.

Northern Virginia Then and Now

The two Centreville Quarry apophyllite on prehnite specimens at left are displayed at the Smithsonian. Those at right are from the collection of a Northern Virginia resident who has been prospecting in the area for more than half a century. While the pieces from the Smithsonian are better known, all are classics specimens from a classic locality. On Lee Highway less than 30 miles from the Smithsonian, the Centreville Quarry is home turf.

On a spur of the moment visit to Washington, D.C. last week, I had dropped by the Smithsonian while my wife accompanied her cousin, who was visiting from Texas, took in the Mall on a tour bus. The only minerals I took time to photograph were the two apophyllite and prehnite specimens at top left. My purpose was to show them to my friend Harold Levey, who in the good old days circa 1950 had permission to camp out at the Centreville quarry and scarf up such material to his heart's content. Harold and his buddies once showed up at the Smithsonian with a particularly attractive specimen and cut a deal with then Curator of Minerals George Switzer to exchange it for a duplicate mimetite specimen from its Robeling Collection. Their Centreville Quarry find quickly found a home in a prominent area of the mineral gallery, which in those days was in a different part of the Museum of Natural History Building. Needless to say, much has changed over 60 years both at the Smithsonian and the former mineral collecting environs of Northern Virginia.

As synchronicity would have it, two days later I found myself at the Falls Church home of the collector who owned the equally if not more impressive specimens pictured at top right. My original plan for that day had been to check out the site of a long forgotten 1960's gypsum find with Jeff Nagy for his project to update and revise the 1980 Maryland Geological Survey publication Minerals of the Washington, D.C. Area by Lawrence R. Bernstein. After those arrangements were postponed, Jeff had arranged instead for us to visit a source whom the original publication had credited with "oral communications" relating to several noteworthy Northern Virginia finds from quite far off the beaten track. He was also the owner of those other two classic apophyllites on prehnite.

While providing us with extensive input that was both timely and informative, he also shared fascinating details relating to the "outside the box" journey that led to his encyclopedic knowledge about the geology, mineralogy, paleontology, and archaeology of Northern Virginia as well as owning some of the finest mineral specimens the region ever produced. His request for anonymity helped me stay focused on the material at hand.

In addition to the apophyllite and prehnite specimens that I was able to photograph, his collection included the most spectacular stilbite crystals I've ever seen from Virginia as well as an amazing byssolite specimen needing to be seen to be believed. Like the apophyllites on prehnite, both of these specimens were also collected years ago at the Centreville Quarry. Since their locations in the cabinet were not conducive to photographs that would do them justice and because of time and space constraints, we agreed that they would be photographed on a subsequent visit.

Most of the collecting in Northern Virginia is now limited to those rare occasions when by special arrangement, a couple of quarries long past their collecting primes permit mineral societies to visit on field trips. Otherwise, little remains accessible beyond stream beds and their cobbles. Our host collected the ilmenite specimen at left, which is by far the largest specimen I've ever observed from the United States, from such a deposit just a few yards from Military Road. He also showed us no less impressive a treasure from another stream bed deposit in Holmes Run. It was a perfectly terminated and barely tumbled three inch by two inch amethyst crystal. We surmised that perhaps it had weathered relatively recently from a nearby matrix and probably become buried soon thereafter.

In coming weeks, Jeff Nagy will be prospecting such stream beds and what few other Northern Virginia collecting spots of which any trace remains. Once published, his revision of Minerals of the Washington, D.C. Area will bring its readers up to the moment.

Deweylite Confusion

How I wish the Maryland Academy of Sciences still maintained its display of Maryland minerals on the third (or fourth) floor of Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library. That was several decades before the Academy's move in 1980 to its Inner Harbor domicile, which to the best of my knowledge has yet to house any minerals from Maryland or anywhere else.

Right next to an enormous Montgomery County gold nugget embedded in a quartz boulder was an humongous chunk of Bare Hills deweylite that oddly enough fascinated me equally as much. Three closeup images of lesser Baltimore County deweylite pieces from my personal collection compose the title picture for this post. From left to right, their localities are the Bare Hills serpentine barrens along Falls Road less than a mile north of the city line, the former Dyer Quarry at Soldiers Delight, and the still active Blue Mount Trap Quarry north of Monkton. Wherever it is found, deweylite is never a species, but a combination of species that seem to vary not only from locality to locality, but according to whom you ask. All that appears to be certain is that serpentine is part of the equation.

The image at left graced the Maryland Minerals web site slide show until about a month ago. It disappeared pursuant to a lesson learned from John S. White, one that seemed to me a bit arcane for mention in our previous post. Even John's advice struck me as a bit convoluted at first, though ultimately it proved to be more concise than anything my subsequent research could uncover. "The best approach," he suggested, " is probably to label it Serpentine "Deweylite."'

Bernard and Hyrsl's Minerals and Their Localities lists Deweylite in italics with the following description: "Deweylite, synonym gymnite----A mixture of serpentine, stevensite or talc minerals, fine grained, yellow, green , red. As resinous crusts in serpentinites at-----(several localities). " Mindat refers to deweylite as "a mixture of various poorly ordered trioctahedral 1:1 and 2:1 layer silicates, mainly lizardite and stevensite. Mindat describes gymnite as both a synonym for antigorite and also an "obsolete name for an apparently amorphous antigorite," and it describes lizardite as a species "closely related to" antigorite and also chrysotile." Antigorite, lizardite, and chrysotile are all prominent members of the serpentine group.

A third definition of "gymnite" from Webster's Dictionary on the Internet proved to be the most interesting part of my research, referring to it as a "hydrous silicate of magnesium coming from Bare Hills, Maryland." Since Minerals and their Localities defines gymnite as a synonym for deweylite itself, and Mindat refers to it as a synonym for antigorite, a reasonable conclusion would be that antigorite is a major component of deweylite from Bare Hills. While our photographs of deweylite from Bare Hills (as well as two other Baltimore County localities) depict antigorite with a brownish colour that might appear far from typical, the species occurs in numerous colors, can range from fibrous to nodular, and has been referred to by a variety of names including , picrolite, and baltimorite. As for other species in the deweylite mix, a magnesite presence is obvious in each of the three Baltimore County specimens.

On the other hand, I've never encountered mention of lizardite from any of deweylite's three Baltimore County localities. At other localities reporting deweylite where lizardite is known to occur, I'd assume that the combination of species could be different. At least John S. White managed to keep things simple. Our Bare Hills "deweylite" image will soon reappear at Maryland Minerals web site with the label that he suggested: Serpentine "Deweylite."

On Lessons learned from John S. White

I question whether anyone currently active in mineralogy has commented more prolifically on the subject than John S. White. His media include books, continuing articles in the major periodicals, lectures, organizational forums, and ultimately the Internet. Along the way, he founded, edited and originally published Mineralogical Record then served as Curator-in-charge (1984-1991) of the Smithsonian's Division of Mineralogy. His "Let's Get it Right" columns during the past decade for Rocks and Minerals bespeak a penchant for addressing topics frequently prone to inaccuracies and misconceptions. While John's mineralogical wisdom typically dispatches through public channels, Yours Truly has for several months enjoyed the privilege of receiving it directly via email. His interest has been in the slide show of Maryland mineral images at the Maryland Minerals web site that I launched in 2007. John grew up here in Maryland and continues to maintain close ties in the state. He currently lives just a few miles across the line in neighboring Pennsylvania.

With the Maryland Minerals site now being reconstructed to implement a major technical change that John suggested, (the site remains accessible), much of his advice regarding nomenclature and sequence of the slides is already in place. It applies to just about any framework for displaying minerals.

• They should be arranged in some sort of order, either geographically or by chemistry. I would certainly group all of the same species if you don't arrange them geographically.



• County names should be included with the locality of each specimen.



• I have a strong personal distaste for "grossular garnet" or "almandine garnet." My fuss may not be altogether rational but it rankles me. "Grossular (garnet family)" does not bother me, but "grossular garnet" sets me off. Apart from the tourmalines and micas, you don't see this with any other family of minerals.
  


• If giving the chemistry for one specimen, give it for each specimen.



• Why say "quartz crystal" instead of just quartz if not doing this this with other crystals.
  


• Photomicrograph is a better word to use than microphotograph.



• Celestine, not celestite.



• Sulfur, not sulphur.



• Much of what is labeled "limonite pseudomorph after pyrite" is actually goethite pseudomorph after pyrite.



• I think it would be good if sizes were indicated at some point for all images, but this is not critical.

Three months of John's advice led to editing the ID's originally Photoshopped to the slide show images with such frequency that further tampering threatened to diminish their quality. This dilemma, however, also heralded the remedy for an even bigger technical issue not yet addressed, namely that touching the mouse triggered a platform application that sometimes covered up the ID's.

The solution necessitates viewing thousands of images on hundreds of old Cd's in order to find the originals and touch them up again with editing software sans descriptions to replace the inscribed images. Once in place, the user-friendly Google Picasa captioning component provides an easier, more efficient means to ID them. Work on this project is underway with completion anticipated by mid-June. After these changes, John's suggestions will be easier to implement, and I hope they keep coming.

Kissimmee, Florida's Tower of Rocks

The last several weeks have been an hiatus from the mineralogical pursuits that increasingly have been taking over my life. Included were an annual religious pilgrimage to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival and then driving along a catastrophically threatened Gulf Coast to visit family in Central Florida before returning to Baltimore via I-95 with a visit to Cumberland Island National Seashore off the Coast of Georgia.

The closest to mineralogically pertinent attraction of this sojourn was probably the Florida Caverns State Park, but alas its cave tours were not offered on Tuesdays (or Wednesdays). Eager to score a post for Mineral Bliss, my next stop was what I thought was Kissimmee, Florida's "Tower of Rocks," which in reality is known as the Monument of States. Currently it sits in the middle of a construction zone adjacent to the library between Main Street and Kissimmee's lakefront.

This 50 foot high pyramidal totem pole like structure, the legacy of its designer, the late Dr. C.W. Bressler-Pettis, extends about 50 foot into the air from an approximately 20 foot base. Its beginnings trace to a letter that Dr. Bressler-Pettis sent in 1942 to President Franklin D. Roosevelt as well as the governors of all the 48 states then in existence to request at least one rock from each state. A year later, through various means, the doctor had obtained all the rocks that he needed. They ranged from ore specimens to fossils to meteorites to plaques. They were mortared into concrete slabs to comprise the monument. Mortared into additional concrete slabs were various rocks of marginal mineralogical interest selected from approximately 23,000 "specimens" that Dr. Bressler-Pettis and his wife had collected while enjoying a putative 350,000 miles worth of motor vacations. Pursuant to a theme of American unity for World War II, Dr. Bressler-Pettis, who had scrapped his medical career to work as an artist, sculpted a globe with an eagle atop it to cap his monument. The Monument of States was constructed and dedicated in 1943.

Rocks continued to arrive in Kissimmee for years thereafter, even subsequent to Dr. Bressler-Pettis's death in 1954. Courtesy of the citizens of Kissimmee, many were were added to the monument. Included were slabs with rocks from Alaska and Hawaii, in addition to slabs later sent in by businesses and other nations. As a resident of Maryland and keeper of the Maryland Minerals website, I spent quite a bit of time trying to locate at least one Maryland rock. All I could find was a plaque dated 1941 from Mr. and Mrs. Charles M. Day of Baltimore.

The only other attraction in America I'm aware of that compares in any way to Kissimmee's Monument of States is The Fireplace of States in Bemidji, Minnesota. Its construction took place about eight years before the Monument States after a "resorter" had sent letters to the President of the United States and the governors of each state. I suspect that Dr. Bressler-Pettis inspiration resulted from having passed through Bemidji at some point during those 350,000 miles of driving.

Maryland Mineralogy Presented at Rochester Symposium

• Note: Readers are encouraged to check out the Mineral Bliss Podcast about the Rochester Symposium.

Beyond the State or local level, a presentation such as Fred Parker delivered on the morning of April 16 at the Rochester Mineralogical Symposium has long been overdue. As Parker expressed early in his talk, Maryland is "the Rodney Dangerfield of the mineral world." He also credited amateur Maryland geologist Jeff Nagy for much of the presentation's information and perspective. Nagy and Parker have been working together on research intended for an updated printing of Lawrence R. Bernstein's Minerals of the Washington, D.C. Area, which was originally published in 1980 by the Maryland Geological Survey.

The presentation was in three parts as follows:

• A short history of mining in Maryland


• Review of a geological map of Maryland


• A slide show of relevant Maryland Minerals
  

MINING HISTORY

Despite reports that Captain John Smith recognized the presence of bog iron ore in sedimentary deposits near the Chesapeake Bay, mining did not begin in Maryland until 1740 with patents for iron and copper. Thereafter, Maryland mined iron in substantial quantity, some that was used in the manufacture of munitions during the American Revolution. Pre-revolutionary dumps are still accessible at Mineral Hill in Carroll County. Maryland was also a significant producer of iron for the War of 1812

By the 1840's, Maryland had become one of the world's leading producers of chromium. The ore was mined at Bare Hills and Soldiers Delight in Baltimore County, near Cooptown in Harford County, and near the Pennsylvania State Line in Cecil County. Soon after the Civil War, Maryland was also a source, though never on a major scale, for a variety of other metals including gold, lead, manganese, and zinc. An accompanying slide, possibly the only known photograph of a facility in Maryland where metals were mined, pictured a manganese operation along the Potomac River about five miles upstream from Harpers Ferry. Maryland also produced such nonmetallic materials as mica beryl, feldspar, clay, talc, and coal.

MAP OF PERTINENT GEOLOGY

A map with colors explaining the geology inherent to the state's rock forming minerals was the focus of the presentation's second segment. It emphasized Maryland's central portion, which is more favorable to the pursuit of mineralogy than the coastal plain to the east or Garrett County at the western end of the state. Parker noted the following:

• Formations of diabase still being quarried along the Susquehanna River near Havre de Grace.
• Serpentine deposits that appear and reappear in a northeast to southwesterly path from the State Line in Cecil County in the northeast to Montgomery County in the southwest with reappearances in Harford, Baltimore, and Montgomery Counties.
• Miocene sediment deposits along the Patuxent and also the Potomac Rivers that have yielded an abundance of high quality gypsum crystals.
• The Baltimore gneiss, a metasediment that occurs sporadically in more spots than could be shown on the map. The Baltimore gneiss hosts many pegmatite intrusions that Parker described as "really quite fascinating in Maryland."
• The Wakefield Marble accounts for both the active Medford and Portland Quarries in Carroll County as well as the long closed Liberty Mine in Frederick County, once Maryland's biggest producer of copper.
• Parker noted the existence of Paleozoic sediments between the Wakefield Marble and the Precambrian metavolcanic Catoctin and Braddock mountain ranges. He described the latter as the source of excellent quartz veins near where these mountains approach the Potomac River.
• Immediately west of the mountains is a region of limestone, shale, and sandstone extending into Pennsylvania and Virginia. It is the source of similar minerals in all three states.

SELECTED MINERAL OCCURRENCES IN MARYLAND

This was the most extensive segment of the presentation. The minerals were shown pursuant to their localities in conjunction with the geological map. Most can be seen on the Picasa slide show at the Maryland Minerals web site. Some, of these minerals also appear in posts on this site from July 18, 2009, May 2, 2009, and April 25, 2009 . Here are some of the highlights noted:

• Approximately 250 different mineral species have been collected in Maryland.
• Maryland is the type locality for one mineral, carrollite, which was discovered at the Patapsco Mine in Carroll County, for which it is named.
• Significant quantities of tourmaline (variety schorl) showing several different habits including terminated crystals up to six inches in chlorite schist have been collected at the Maryland Materials Quarry in the diabase formation along the Susquehanna River.
• As noted in the geological segment, the Miocene sediment deposits at Chancellors Point in St. Mary's County and Fort Washington in Prince Georges County have produced gypsum crystals of magnificent quality.
• Garnets up to two inches in chlorite schist are abundant in a wooded area of Baltimore County about 22 miles north of Baltimore City.
• What Parker belives could be Maryland's most prolific beryl locality is on the banks of a river near the Baltimore/Howard County line at a locality that he and Nagy refer to as the "Waterside Prospect." It is currently covered with water.
• A particularly interesting slide showed monazite, which is rare in Maryland, from one of several long closed mica mines in Montgomery County.
• Another slide displayed quartz crystals from a "lost" locality in Clarksville, Howard County, which Parker rediscovered when combing the digs for a housing development that ultimately obliterated the locality.
• One of the most spectacular slides was of an historic botroydal malachite specimen from Carroll County's Patapsco Mine.
• Two slides of Maryland gold in quartz, one from Montgomery County, another from Carroll County, attracted major interest.
• Parker cited the Medford Quarry in Carroll County as Maryland's most prolific locality. He emphasized its abundance of diverse calcite pockets and also noted it as the source of some rare minerals. As an example, a slide of micro lanthanite crystals from a one-time find was shown.
• The Portland Quarry at Union Bridge in Carroll County, just a few miles from the Medford Quarry, received the distinction of being Maryland's most unpredicable locality Among the slides with which Parker demonstrated this point was one of a transparent yellow wulfenite specimen from a find in the 1970's.
• Predictably and appropriately, he reserved for the Hunting Hill Quarry in Montgomery County the honor of being Maryland's most mineralogically important locality. Citing the gemmy grossular associated with its serpentine and rodintine, he compared Hunting Hill's geology to Vermont's Eden Mills locality. He then showed slides of some of the seventy one different species that have been collected at Hunting Hill. A slide of xonotlite crystals was particularly noteworthy.
• An expecially spectacular slide showed quartz crystals that were collected in the soil near Burkittsville in Frederick County prior to the Civil War.
• Further west in Paleozoic limestone near Hagerstown in Washington County, Parker noted that one of several quarries that are quite similar to one another has produced attractive strontianite as well as native sulphur and celestine.
• Further west in Washington County, Parker recognized the Pinesburg Quarry for its blue barite crystals and showed a slide of an exceptional specimen from his personal collection.
• The final and westernmost locality he named was Savage Mountain near Frostburg. Once mined for its fire clay, it was one of Maryland's most popular collecting localities in the 1930's and 1940's. Savage Mountain is best known for geode like nodules filled with crystals of siderite and barite. A highlight was a slide photographed by Yours Truly of such a nodule bearing spectacular needles of millerite up to an inch long.
• Parker concluded his presentation with an image of that he described as a "doorstop," namely serpentine and chromite with an historic label attached to it. The idea was to make the point that despite the initial impression of numerous mineral people, Maryland's mineralogy amounted to more than than simply these two species.

Note to readers: The next Mineral Bliss post is scheduled to appear at the end of the second week of May, 2010

Panning for Anatase in Harford County: Part II

Ev parked along the country road paralleling Falling Branch opposite from where a small rivulet flowed into it from the adjacent wooded hillside. We removed from his trunk our waders, rubber gloves with cotton gloves to wear under them, two shovels two buckets, one with 1/4 holes drilled into the bottom third, pans, Ev's "sucker," and baggies. Casing out the stream, Ev pointed out and expressed his preference for spots where the velocity of the water changed, better in front of rocks around which the current swirled with at least some downward motion. He was also eager to pan at the mouth of the small rivulet

As I watched from the bank, Ev waded into the stream, secured his buckets, one placed into another for drainage from top to bottom, and began digging beneath the downstream side of a rock the current was circumventing. For each load, Ev extended his shovel all the way down to scrape the bedrock where gold, as the heaviest substance in the stream, tends to gravitate. Anatase, though nowhere near so heavy as gold, has sufficient specific gravity to do likewise.

After tossing away the larger rocks, Ev turned the linked buckets sideways at an angle to the current to sieve the sand and smaller pebbles to the bottom bucket through the holes in the top one. After repeating the process several times, he transferred the contents of the bottom bucket into the pan.

Since some of the additional sand remaning in the stream beneath the rock ledges was likely to be relatively heavy, Ev scraped the area, seeking out small pockets with a screwdriver before going to work with the "sucker" he is holding in the image at right. He covered the smaller tube with the larger one and placed the tip under the ledge. While holding the smaller tube in place, he pulled on the larger one to suck out water in which additional sand was dispersed. This he poured into the pan.

The next step was the actual panning to reduce the pan's contents to heavy "black sand," much of which would prove to be magnetite. To accomplish this, he held the pan in the stream and swirled its contents back and forth. With assistance from a reasonably mild current, the lighter sediment washed away while small pebbles he removed by hand trended toward the top. A layer of lighter sand settled beneath them. The heavier black sand, meanwhile, gravitated to the bottom of the pan or became caught in the cavities built into its side. This work takes a few minutes and can be tedious. Upon completion, Ev placed the remaining black sand into a marked baggie.

Ev then repeated the entire process where the rivulet entered Falling branch. When finished, he suggested I grab a shovel and try my luck in front of another rock surrounded by swirling current. Albeit with much less finesse, I followed all the previously described steps and eventually produced a small quantity of black sand. We placed it in a marked baggie and headed back to Ev's house, put the sand in his oven to dry, and drove into Jarrettsville for lunch.

When we returned in about 45 minutes, the sand had dried. After removing with a magnet the predominant magnetite, we placed what remained into three film canisters. The fruits of our morning's labors were now ready for observation under Ev's microscope. Checking a few small samples, we found fragments as well as crystals of garnet, minute cubes of goethite after pyrite, specks of pyrite, possibly some beryl, a few black octahedra (Were they chromite? Why didn't I think to retrieve that magnet?), and occasional rough grains of anatase. Ed removed the most interesting material with a special pair of microscopically tipped tweezers. After two hours, we had examined but a small fraction of the sand.

A week has now passed, and Ev just emailed me that he has finished going through the sand from the first two of our three digs. While his second dig at the mouth of the small rivulet hadn't yielded much, his first dig of the day ended up producing "210 little pieces of blue, bark blue, tan (the most), and yellow (the least) anatase," including 3 dark blue double pyramids (all broken),and two sky blue very small flat topped pyramids (complete), and 2 dark blue flat plates.

Meanwhile, I've been out of town over this past week and before leaving had time to check out but a small sprinkling from the film canister bearing the fruits of my own first attempt at panning. A portion of of it is shown at left. Eyes still relatively untrained for spotting anatase, my inclination had been to delay going through the rest until the list of activities on my busy to-do list slowed down a bit. After receiving Ev's recent email, however, a few of the them could have to wait.

Gold and Anatase in Harford County, Maryland

Rarely does a topic more newsworthy to Mineral Bliss sensibility present itself than the contents of an email received recently from Ev Smith. Included were the above image of anatase crystals he panned from Falling Branch in Harford County Maryland as well as photos of larger specimens of rich chromite and serpentine minerals (right) that he collected near Cooptown. I responded within minutes and soon managed to wrangle an invitation to go panning for anatase with Ev a week later in Harford County's Falling Branch.

Like so many who pan for gold in the Mid-Atlantic, Ev got started with his hobby under the mentorship of Jack Nelson, the late and legendary regional "godfather" of panning. They panned mostly near Great Falls in Montgomery County. This is where Rock Run and other small streams flow through woodlands where gold mining operations were ubiquitous between 1864 and 1940. After Jack's death from cancer in 2002, Ev began panning for gold in streams closer to his home near Jarrettsville in Harford County. He is the only person I know of to actually find gold in Harford County. Most of the flakes in the image at left, Ev panned from Harford County streams. The larger nugget, in the top left corner of the picture, is from a small stream in Pennsylvania just over the Maryland line.

As a protege of Jack Nelson, it didn't surprise me that Ev would look for more than just gold in the material he panned from these streams. Jack was also an avid micromounter and had discovered amidst heavy mineral concentrates from streams in Montgomery County and elsewhere the first cubic garnets ever to be reported and identified. Aware that some of the grains of sand he was extracting were likely to be gem minerals, Ev made a practice of bringing home in baggies the sand that remained at the bottom of his pan at the end of the sifting process. Encountered were rutile, schorl, garnets in hues running a gamut from lavender to deep red, minute cubes of goethite pseudomorph after pyrite, and various other grains of sand not as easy to visually identify. Very likely, they could include, beryl apatite, zircon, and zoisite. The less common anatase was a later find that became apparent after Ev isolated several uncommon anatase grains with their crystal habits intact. More typically the anatase occurs in broken fragments like those in the image at right.

I arrived at Ev's house on Monday, April 5, with a borrowed pair of waders. In short order, we were en route to Falling Branch. Along the way, Ev pointed out to me where he had collected the chromite and serpentine minerals. Minerals of Maryland had described the locality as "serpentine barrens" with numerous chrome prospects in"Coopstown and Vicinity." Assuming this would be a landscape similar to Soldiers Delight or Bare Hills in Baltimore County, I had previously driven through the area looking without success. Instead, what Ev pointed out to me was a lush woodland with a variety of tall trees. For access, permission would need to be obtained at several houses, and Ev was no longer certain which ones. Ev also told me about a copper prospect just a short walk away that was not mentioned in Minerals of Maryland where he once collected some copper bearing minerals.

About ten minutes later, we pulled off a country road along Falling Branch not far from where it empties into Deer Creek. With our waders, a couple of shovels, two large white white buckets, one with 1/4 inch holes drilled through its bottom half, pans, and Ev's "sucker," we headed toward the stream. Next week's Mineral Bliss post will be about our experience.

Some Dazzling Maryland Microminerals

This week's post borrows from a brief slide show of Maryland micromounts that I presented this past Friday evening to the Atlantic Micromount conference. Regular followers of Mineral Bliss may have seen some but not all of these specimens before. The cover girl is anglesite from Frederick County's Mountain View Lead mine, photographed at about 30x. The smithsonite image at left, shot with similar magnification ,also hailed from the Mountain View locality. Its colour amazes me. Both specimens were collected about 15 years ago. The self-collected azurite with malachite at right is from my visit there that was described in the Mineral Bliss post of March 21, 2009. It was the only evidence of either of those two secondary copper minerals I encountered.

The much more more spectacular malachite (left) was collected in Carroll County just east of Frederick County at the Lehigh-Portland Cement Quarry near Union Bridge. Most of Maryland's relatively scarce crystallized malachite occurs in acicular crystals. Their different habit and greener than green hue against a backdrop of yellow calcite makes them a personal favorite. The colour of this calcite isn't too different from that of the only wulfenite ever reported from Maryland, which interestingly was collected at this same Lehigh-Portland Cement Quarry locality. All that was ever found was from a single rock uncovered in the 1970's by the late and legendary Maryland collector George Brewer. A flattened pyramid of this wulfenite is pictured at right. Just above it is a cerussite crystal that measures about a millimeter.

The Maryland cerussite crystals below at left are much larger, but not so much so as to preclude being shown in the company of microminerals. They were also collected in Carroll County just a few miles away at the Redland- Genstar Medford Quarry. Though displayed in my collection as a hand specimen, the crystals are better appreciated with the magnification from a macro lens as shown. The rarest and most remarkable mineral ever yielded from the Medford Quarry is the lanthanite pictured at right. As with the wulfenite that was found so close by, all of Maryland's known supply of lanthanite came from one rock. While the nomenclature system for such rare earth species directs that the dominant rare earth element's symbol be shown at the end of the mineral's name, I do not believe such a determination was ever made with this find. A good reason could be that it was too dear and tiny to give any up for testing.

Though Maryland has more than its share of zeolite localities around the state, I'm not aware of any that have produced micromounts more eye-catching than the old-timer chabazite and heulandite pieces that are in Harvard University's micromount collection. Both specimens were from one of the several long closed and covered up 19th century gneiss quarries that operated in Baltimore City's Jones Falls Valley. The chabazite is at left, the heulandite at right.

Maryland's serpentine barrens, all which were once mined for chromium, have also yielded some intriguing micromount material. I feel like apologizing to those who attended my presentation this past Friday night for neglecting to show them the chromian clinochlore (aka rhodochrome, penninite, japanite, miskeyite) pictured at right from Cecil County's State Line Chrome Pits and part of the Harvard collection. The kind of beautiful red quartz crystals at left from the geologically similar Soldiers Delight in Baltimore County are less likely to occur within the vast expanses of serpentine barrens than lining vugs in rocks from its greener wooded areas. Though the land is public and has been set aside for the enjoyment of all, the the removal by anyone of mineral specimens is strictly prohibited with enforcement that's known to be rigid.

Different Pokrovskite Habits, a Possible New Mineral, Hunting Hill Closed

Despite a 1987 article by John White in Mineralogical Record entitled "Pokrovskite: A Common Mineral" ---pokrovskite is by all accounts relatively obscure. MINDAT currently shows only three images of this magnesium bearing carbonate of the rosasite series and names but seven localities around the world from which it's been reported. Perhaps MINDAT will show more images after I submit two of my own, but we'll have to see. They will differ visually not only from each other, but from all three of the images presently up on MINDAT. One is the micro-photograph at the right end of the above full view, macro, micro progression. The other will be the image at right of pokrovskite bearing a more unusual "satin spar" habit.

During my visit this past December to discuss and photograph Maryland Minerals at the Harvard Mineralogical Museum, its curator Carl Francis more than once mentioned pokrovskite as an example of one of the relatively few rare minerals known to be found in Maryland. He made a point of showing me the Museum's premier specimen with the familiar brown radiating tufts. Later, as I observed and photographed Harvard's Maryland micromounts, the "satin spar" piece turned up. Quite deliberately albeit incorrectly, I referred to the pokrovskite identification as "questionable" in a caption beneath the photograph.

No sooner had I mailed the image (and caption) as part of a "Harvard's Maryland Minerals" CD to Dr. Francis than Fred Parker, who authored "The Minerals of Hunting Hill Quarry, Rockville Maryland," in the September, 2005 Mineralogical Record, replied to a recent Email from me requesting his opinion regarding the pokrovskite identification. "Maybe," Fred wrote."One form of pokrovskite is a 'satin spar' like formation which this resembles." Later in day, once I'd informed Parker that Harvard had obtained the micromount specimen from Fred Shaefermeyer, his response was: "Absolutely. Fred Schaefermeyer was the Prince of Pokrovskite."

Fred Parker and the much older Fred Schaefermeyer were close friends who collected together at Hunting Hill before and through the 1990's. In addition to dubbing Schaefermeyer the "Prince of Pokrovskite,"Parker also spoke of him as the "father of Hunting Hill micromineralogy, a cheerful and intelligent man whose forte was a an eye for picking up minerals that looked different." After his eyesight had declined to the point he could not longer collect, Schaefermeyer dissipated his collection and turned over to Parker several flats of unlabeled Hunting Hill minerals.

Parker sent several pieces about which he was particularly curious for analysis at James Madison University by Lance Kearns. One was the "satin spar" like material, which Kearns identified as pokrovskite. He also uncovered another brown and radiating mineral from the rosasite series that he could not identify. The possibility seems realistic that this could be a new mineral. To date, no one has come forward to probe further regarding its possible submission to the IMA for approval as such.

And now for the bad news: Prospects have been quashed at Hunting Hill for collecting any more pokrovskite, any more of this potential new mineral, or for that matter any of the 70 species known to occur there. A Swiss company recently purchased Hunting Hill and closed it to all with interest in collecting.

Philadelphia Academy's Maryland Mineral Suite Comes Home

I find myself coming up with words like "heinous" and "ignominious," when contemplating how for more than 50 years the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia ignored and neglected a significant national treasure that happened to be its mineral collection . Over that period, a fair number of the 30 thousand plus specimens therein had decomposed, were pilfered, or crashed into one another amidst rotting storage facilities. Finally, in the early part of the "aught" decade, the Academy decided to sell. John White, former Curator of Minerals at the Smithsonian, wrote in a subsequent digital commentary, that the Academy's then president "was dazzled by dollar signs." The sale took place in 2007.

With no other museum able to afford to purchase so vast and important a collection, it ended up in the hands of two prominent high end mineral dealerships, namely Collectors Edge and Cristalle. Both entities have long been highly regarded and well respected by pretty much the entire gamut of players in the mineralogy arena. Their stewardship and disposal of the Philadelphia Academy collection has lived up to that reputation. Various "suites" of minerals sorted according to locality were kept together and offered for purchase to museums and other potentially appropriate custodial sources. The Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, for instance, purchased the entire Pennsylvania suite of over 400 flats.

The collection had a vastly smaller Maryland suite, in which no educational institution or museum demonstrated interest, perhaps because few of the Maryland specimens rated as "eye candy." That was fine with Marylander Fred Parker, to whom vintage minerals had just as much appeal. After making inquiries that were followed by words on his behalf from friends, Parker ultimately received a phone call from Steve Behling of Collectors Edge.

Negotiations were simple and quick. With low demand, the price was right, and Parker accepted Behling's offer without a haggle. Arrangements were made for delivery and transfer at the 2008 East Coast Gem and Mineral Show in West Springfield, Massachusetts.

Since bringing the suite home, Parker has kept it completely intact. The best pieces fill the case by which he stands in the picture (at top)/ He keeps the others in two flats next to it.

"The labels," he notes ( meaning additional labels accompanying the Academy's labels), "are a who's who of the important mineralogy people of the 1800's." The names include Gerard Troost (1776-1850), William Jeffries (1820-1906), and Horace Hayden (1769-1844). On the label next to the smoky quartz crystal at left, the early collector's name (George Carpenter (1802-1860) has disintegrated away. The locality, Frederick County, with no information as to exactly where in Frederick County, is still legible. That's how it was in the 1800's Fred explained to me. The labels back then were less specific about localities than they are today.

Another mineral from the suite that especially impresses Parker is a magnetite crystal from Harford County that's just short of two inches in diameter. He also particularly likes, more for its unusual combination of minerals than appearance, a specimen of sphene with tabular apatite crystals and plates of hematite.

Credit Fred Parker for preserving a meaningful and pertinent part of history that would otherwise have been lost. This vintage suite of minerals not only chronicles the evolution in Maryland of a scientific field of study, it tells us what the State is made of.

Alfredo Petrov: One of a Kind

When asked where he lives, Alfredo Petrov answers "kind of out of my suitcase," and likes to joke that he personally has kept American Airlines out of bankruptcy. " He adds: "I have my rocks, my microscopes, and my clothes scattered about homes on four continents." This makes sense for someone who deals minerals at 16 shows every year (three in Japan, two in Europe, and eleven in the United States). In addition to these shows, Alfredo and partner Frank deWit operate a mineral travel business that escorts collectors on trips to such destinations as Bolivia, Greenland, Portugal, Morocco, Spain, Switzerland, Italy and Japan.

Alfredo was born in Great Britain of a Russian father and German mother. He attended high school in Ethiopia where, as the only white student among 800 who were black, remembers himself as having been "kind of like the school pet." He began college in Beirut, Lebanon, because of its proximity to Ethiopia and ended up in the U.S., graduating with a degree in geology from San Diego State. Among other places he has since lived and worked are Japan, where he worked as a translator, and in Peekskill, New York, working as an assistant to Tony Nikischer of Mineral News. At all the shows around the world where he sets up shop, the sign announcing his presence reads, "Alfredo Petrov: Bolivia." That is where he was living and working as a geologist for the Bolivian government when he first began selling minerals internationally.

Most of the world's phosphophyllite, which numerous credible dealers refer to as "the Holy Grail of minerals," comes from Boliva, and Alfredo believes that he's supplied more than half of of all that's hit the market over the past several years. The Holy Grail tag attached itself at the end of the 1990's, when phosphophyllite had become all but extinct at the only major locality that produced it, namely the Unificado Mine in Cerro Rico near Potosi. In more recent years, after acquiring specimens from two new Bolivian localities, Alfredo became the man to see for it. He quickly points out, however, that these newer localities never produce specimens as gemmy as those from the original locality

Alfredo credits Rock Currier for bringing him to Tucson and getting him started as a mineral dealer. "Rock Currier," he says "did more than anyone to internationalize the major shows. The big shows didn't use to be international then like they are now. Then, in the late 1970's, he (Rock) started finding people in Third World countries, taught them how to be mineral dealers, and brought them here."

Most of the minerals Alfredo sells (about 80 per cent, he says) are to other dealers who resell them in stores, and on the Internet. Without exception, the selection is eclectic, diverse, and dominated by specimens that are rare and/or for one reason or another unusual. Many he has either field collected himself or obtained at shows in different parts of the world. Those at left, for instance are from Japan. The labels are in Alfredo's distinctive handwriting and come in different shapes, colors, and sizes.

Alfredo is also an avid micromounter and writes for numerous publications including Rocks and Minerals, Mineralogical Record, Mineral News, and Lapis. He is also a major player at Mindat. More than anything, he's one of a kind.