SILVER REEF: A STRIKE, A BOOM, THE BUST!

 Alternative Title: We’ll all be rich with the biggest silver strike this side of Hudson Bay.  Rudolph the Red-nosed reindeer (credit 1964 Videocraft International Ltd)

 

Saturday January 11, 2024. Hundreds of fishers are now crowding the back bays of the Mississippi River waiting for a sunnie or a fat perch, but most importantly the big ballgames are this weekend--The Packers and the Vikings, AKA the Pack and the Vikes, are in the NFL Payoffs. Most fishers will retreat to their tents or huts stocked with propane heaters, cold beer, chairs, color TVs, and lots of food. 

Nothing can beat the happiness of viewing a large amaryllis on a cold and cloudy January day.

I was spending the cold Wisconsin day, one only fit for ice fishers, in my cozy and warm office daydreaming while contemplating about the beautiful colors one can find in Christmas flowers. In between a snooze and a contemplation or two, I was examining some of my micro perky boxes and ran across an old box labeled BEAVERITE, WARREN LODE #5, MOHAVE CO AZ. Names like beaverite always pique my interest so I decided to explore the small sample and see what beaverite was all about! Little did I know that such exploration would lead down the proverbial rabbit hole with each side tunnel offering different confusing possibilities. For example, according to MinDat, beaverite is unknown from Warren Lode #5. More on that conundrum later. What I did find, however, was a fantastic paper by Biek and Rohrer (2006) describing the geology and mining history of a most interesting area in southwestern Utah, Silver Reef. For you see, Silver Reef in Beaver County, Utah, is the Type Locality for Beaverite, an uncommon lead iron copper sulfate: Pb(Fe³⁺₂Cu)(SO₄)₂(OH)₆.  So that serendipitous tidbit sent me sliding down the rabbit hole and finding, as Alice said—it’s rather curious you know, this sort of life.

Biek and Rohrer (2006) described the Silver Reef Mining Area as “a geologic anomaly, a historical curiosity, and an ecological novelty. It is one of the few places in the world where economic disseminated silver chloride [chlorargyrite: AgCl] was produced from sandstone."  I had the opportunity to visit Silver Reef during my late 1960s grad school days at the University of Utah, later in the 1980s while chasing fossils in southern Utah, and finally in spring 2023 during a two month, ”get out of cold weather” stint, in St. George, Utah. I tried very hard to locate a bit of the silver with each visit but no luck. Nada. However, there are many old mining structures, shafts, head frames, dump piles, equipment, a preserved original building, and a wonderful museum to keep one busy and enticed.

Stone walls remaining from a building at Silver Reef.

Some mine openings just head straight down.

Head Frame on Big Hill Reef. Photo from Reid and Rohrer, 2006.

 

Typical adit heading into the reef sandstone. Rebar gate is a recent addition to keep people out while allowing bats freedom in and out. Photo from Reid and Rohrer, 2006.

The Pine Valley Mountains form a beautiful backdrop at Silver Reef. These are some of the highest peaks in southern Utah (Signal Peak is 10,369 feet) and were formed from the Pine Valley Laccolith, perhaps the largest such igneous feature in the U.S. The quartz monzonite composing the laccolith has been dated as around 22 Ma.

Springdale Sandstone, AKA silver sandstone, exposed at Silver Reef. Public Domain Photo courtesy of arbyreed on Flicker.

The “silver history” of Silver Reef begin when a “vein of silver” was discovered in sandstone about 1866 by one John Kemple. However, poor ole John received a hearty round of laughs and guffaws since “everyone” knew silver veins occurred in “hard rocks”, usually igneous, and certainly silver was absent in most sedimentary rocks like sandstone. Ten years later a couple of Salt Lake City “bankers”, the Walker Brothers, decided to take a chance on the long-reported silver vein and sent a professional “claim guy” to stake several mining claims in the sandstone. Yep, you guessed it-----there really was disseminated silver chloride (AKA horn silver) in the sandstone and in three years over 2,000 miners were living and working on the original claims, as well as those migrating outward to dozens (hundreds) of new claims.  It turns out that not only was silver present at Silver Reef but also ores of lead, copper, and uranium. Google AI (accessed January 2025) stated, “the ore in the Silver Reef Mining District averaged 20 to 60 ounces of silver per ton.” According to MinDat (accessed January 2025) the Silver Reef District produced 7.52 million ounces of silver, 10.7 million pounds of copper, and an unknown amount of gold (probably not much). Most of this production happened during a five-year period of 1878-1882. By 1888 all the big mines had pulled up stake as the near surface ore was wiped out, the price of silver on the exchanges was heading toward the basement, and water was filling the lower tunnels. By 1903 the silver towns of Silver Reef were deserted. Sort of a typical western mining town history—a strike, the boom, and a bust!

But what about the story of silver in a sandstone? Biek and Rohrer (2006) described the Silver Reef area as one of the few places in the world where “economic disseminated silver chloride was produced from sandstone.”  A validation for ole John Kemple.

But where did the silver come from? What was the source? James and Newman (1986) suggested that “ground water leached metals from regional silver-rich rocks (presumably mostly from volcanic ash beds in the [Triassic] Chinle Formation) or from igneous systems and redeposited them in the [Jurassic] Springdale Sandstone, the first overlying permeable bed with organic material. The silver was probably transported by a sulfide-poor, chlorine-rich, brine and passed upward into anticlinal traps where it encountered reducing conditions or low-salinity groundwater that caused silver to precipitate.”

Biek and Rohrer, in their masterful 2006 article, noted that “although most workers familiar with the area agree that the Silver Reef deposits formed from metal-bearing low-temperature brines along permeable zones in the Springdale Sandstone, there is no consensus on the source of the metals, the chemistry and migration routes of ore fluids, and mechanisms to explain the variable distribution of silver, copper, and uranium.”  According to my 57-year-old class notes, that statement was about exactly what we learned in Lee Stokes’ stratigraphy classes at the University of Utah! Perhaps this is one of life’s persistent questions and I need to make a call to the Acme Building (Thanks Garrison Keilor)? You know: on the 12th Floor of the Acme Building, one man is still trying to find the answers to life’s persistent questions: Guy Noir, Private Eye.”

   Nostalgia is when you want things to stay the same!    Jeanna Moreau      

Interstate 70 bisects the San Rafael Swell and cuts through the tilted Jurassic Navajo Sandstone that is the Reef on the east side of the uplift.

In the Intermountain West one often sees the term “reef” with the most famous being the San Rafael Reef. In this usage reef does not refer to a nautical feature but to a resistant rock layer, usually indurated sandstone, that projects above its neighboring layers (often softer and easily erodible shale). At Silver Reef there are several large exposures of the resistant Springdale Sandstone (the silver bearing unit) that are exposed along, and on either side, of the nose of the Virgin Anticline, a small 30 mile long “buckle” in the rocks. The anticline is a compressional feature associated with the Lower Cretaceous Sevier Orogeny. These exposures are repeated in the rock stratigraphy due to numerous thrust faults moving the rocks around. The early silver miners thought that several different sandstone layers contained silver; however, the newly arriving geologists were able to map the faults and identify just a single silver-bearing sandstone. The resistant Springdale exposures at Silver Reef are known as the White, Buckeye, East, Big Hill, and Butte Reefs and are the major areas and mines of silver.

Notice how the reefs, outcrops of the Springdale Sandstone, are not connected but offset from each other giving the illusion that several different silver-bearing sandstone units were present. Photo from Biek and Rohrer (2006). The moral of the story—call a geologist if you locate silver!

 

Note the massive dump pile from a large mine in the reef.

Like the Phoenix, Silver Reef has experienced a rebirth, in fact, several periods of renaissance with the most successful mining activity being in 1950-1951 when 2500 pounds of uranium oxide, mostly carnotite, was hauled out for processing during the Colorado Plateau “uranium boom.” Visit Silver Reef today and you will notice a much larger rebirth as the old mines are now part of a large upscale home subdivision of Leeds and greater St George.

But wait, what about beaverite, the mineral that started this discussion? The Silver Reef beaverite, in current mineral classification, is known as beaverite-(Cu) due to copper as a major cation: Pb(Fe³⁺₂Cu)(SO₄)₂(OH)₆ and is the copper analogue of beaverite-(Zn) Pb(Fe³⁺₂Zn)(SO₄)₂(OH)₆  described from the Mikawa Mine in Japan.  It took me a long time to round up a copy of the original naming and description of the Silver Reef Type Specimen by Butler and Schaller in the 1911 American Journal of Science: check the QR code below created from https://rruff.info/Beaverite.

 

Butler and Schaller described the mineral: “Beaverite, a New Mineral. From the Horn Silver mine near the town of Frisco was collected a mineral that on examination in the laboratories of the United States Geological Survey proved to be a new species. For this mineral, which is a hydrous sulphate of copper, lead and ferric iron, the name Beaverite is proposed, after the name of the county from which it was first described. Occurrence.-The mineralization in the Horn Silver mine occurs along a fault plane that has thrown Tertiary lavas down against Cambrian-Ordovician limestone, the ore deposits being mainly a replacement of the volcanic rocks”.

 In 1992, Breidenstein and others redefined the chemistry and crystal structure of beaverite and suggested that beaverite-(Cu) is the most common of the related species with the zinc variety rare at only five different mines in Asia, Europe, and South America. In contrast, the Cu variety is uncommon but has a worldwide distribution; both are members of the Alunite Group > Alunite Supergroup.

A couple of general views of the beaverite-(Cu) specimen. FOV ~9 mm.

Note white--white cream mass, lemon yellow mass, The dark (Black) matrix is goethite. golden yellow mass, green exposures with some botryoidal, large quartz and salt and pepper scattered everywhere.

 

 

 

A golden yellow mass of submillimeter crystals of beaverite-(Cu). In fact,the mass in the middle photo is ~1 mm in width FOV. Essentially this is the limit of my photography skills.

 

Note the sub millimeter green balls of some copper mineral--malachite?, brochantite?, plumbojarosite (lead iron sulfate), osarizawaite?

Sub millimeter prismatic crystals of malachite?

MinDat noted that Beaverite-(Cu) has a yellow color that seems to range from a very pale yellow to a bright lemon yellow. However, as one peruses the photographs on MinDat and Google Photos it becomes apparent, at least to an ole plugger like me, that the mineral may also be noted in various shades of green and brown to golden brown to a golden yellow. Beaverite-(Cu) ranges from earthy masses without visible crystals (at least to me) to microcrystals often appearing as somewhat vitreous encrustations.  Whatever the case, the crystals are really tiny or almost non-visible, even with a decent, rockhound, binocular scope.

And what about the Warren Lode # 5? Not much I am afraid. Evidently it was a small claim for someone wishing for a polymetallic mine. Cannot locate any production figures. Mine not identified in Mineralogy of Arizona. No beaverite noted in MinDat; however, osarizawaite was identified (correctly?).              

To complicate identification, at least to ole plugger rockhounds, is a warning from MinDat: Beaverite-(Cu) Forms a solid solution series with its Al analogue osarizawaite .It can be distinguished from plumbojarosite  only by accurate determination of the Fe:Cu ratio. And, other Fe members of the alunite family are also visually very similar [to beaverite].  That, my fellow rockhounds is enough to scare most of us—unless we have access to nice electronic gizmos such as microprobes or XRDs!  

              

OK boys, let me tell you about the problem of identifying beaverite from the silver mines. Ole Mike just led us down a rabbit hole with that dang mineral!  Do we boot him out of the club or send him to catch the rabbit? ? Apologies to Cassius Marcellus Coolidge and his Public Domain photo.

Writing this paper was somewhat above my pay grade. One really needs an XRD or Microprobe to confirm visual identification of such small crystals. So don't quote any of my identifications as 100% accurate. As my hero Teddy Roosevelt said, Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

 REFERENCES CITED

Bayless, P., U. Kolitsch, E.H. Nickel, and A. Pring, 2010, Alunite Supergroup: recommended nomenclature: Mineralogical Magazine, v. 74, no, 5.

Biek, Robert and C. Rohrer, 2006, Geology, mining history, and reclamation of the Silver Reef mining district, Washington County, Utah in R. Bon, R. Gloyn and G. Park (editors), Mining Districts of Utah: Utah Geological Association Publication 32.

James, L.P., and E.W. Newman,1986, Subsurface character of mineralization at Silver Reef, Utah, and a possible model for ore genesis, in Griffen, D.T., and W.R. Phillips, (editors), Thrusting and extensional structures and mineralization in the Beaver Dam Mountains, southwestern Utah: Utah Geological Association Publication 15.

 

A FEW NIFTY MINERALS FROM CREEDE

 I am still rummaging around my mineral collection trying to sort out and check material after my move from Colorado to Wisconsin. But I am not very diligent with sorting through a large amount of material “tossed” into the garage. This latter mess does not include my minerals; therefore, the stuff is being re-thrown into two piles 1) why did I transport this material just to haul it to Goodwill; and 2) how do I find space for this “good” stuff? I guess these are some of life’s persistent questions so perhaps I should call in Guy Noir!

Sorting minerals is an enjoyable hobby as I try to come up with ideas on how to include them on this Blog. Today I am briefly noting three mineral specimens that are quite attractive but only cost about a buck each. That $3.50 total is about the price of a single black coffee at my local shop. The initial taste of the coffee is fantastic, but the enjoyment of the minerals is long lasting.In addition, I am throwing in a couple of other, slightly more expensive, specimens.

One of best-known mining areas in Colorado is Creede, located in the San Juan Mountains in the southwestern quadrant of the State. The mines of the area produced, starting in ~1891, a significant  amount of silver. The mine owners prospered for a couple of years but then the  Panic of 1893 hit like a bomb as the Sherman Silver Act was repealed that year. Many smaller and less productive silver mines at all locations in the country were shuttered due to lower prices for silver and costly production costs. However, the Creede mines utilized their massive silver-rich veins and lower production costs to survive the Panic and produce until 1985 when the Last Chance mine closed. But even today there are rumors of core drilling in the area as companies try to ferret out new productive veins.

Want to know about the Sherman Silver Act? Check post May 18, 2012

Creede is a booming community today—but only during the summer/fall months. Like the mythical Phoenix arising from the ashes and regenerating itself, Creede has made the journey from a typical western mining community with periods of boom and bust to a thriving “destination locality” that attracts thousands of visitors each year. The community has “boomed” due to the merging of their past silver history/wealth with an absolutely gorgeous physical setting at 8850 feet, a well designed underground mine tour, an underground  museum, well preserved Victorian buildings and timbered mining structures, art galleries, numerous cultural and social events such as a rock and mineral show, a scenic main street hemmed in by tall, 1000 feet, beds of rhyolite, and the presence of the Amethyst Vein that still produces great mineral specimens. However, the icing on the cake was the arrival, in 1997, of Jack Moris, a long-haul truck driver, and his dream of turning a mine or two into an immense geology attraction. So, off he went and purchased the Last Chance Mine situated along the Amethyst Vein, started specimen-collecting, both in the mine and in the dumps, and soon attracted hordes of rockhounds and tourists. Today, visitors can pay a very modest fee to collect in the dumps, take an educational underground mine tour (fully approved by the State), and purchase magnificent specimens in the gift shop. Old Creede, along with the ingenious Jack and his mine, has proved to be a spectacular tourist attraction, not only for rockhounds but for fans attending performances of the well-respected Creede Repertory Theater, the annual rock drilling competition, and the camping, off road and ATV trails, and nearby cold-water trout fisheries to provide a wealth of opportunities.

As a kid growing up in small town Kansas, I believed that we could see the mountains as soon as dad crossed the Kansas-Colorado state line on U.S. 40 heading to Denver. Today, more educated Kansas visitors to Colorado know you can’t spot Pikes Peak from I-70 but often believe that the State’s magnificent mountains formed about the same geological time during the Laramide Orogeny (AKA mountain building event). And it is true that the Laramide event greatly affected much of the western half of the State. I suppose it is too complicated to tell the kiddos that the elevation of the Front Range is due to a post Laramide regional uplift and accentuated by erosion.

However, the San Juan Mountains have their ancestor in the major volcanic event starting about 40 Ma when large magma domes begin pushing up and exploding, a massive ignimbrite flare-up across Utah, Colorado, and Utah in what must have been spectacular fashion. Many of these volcanoes and vents spewed out so much ejecta they collapsed inward forming great calderas (think Crater Lake in Oregon). The best known of these San Juan calderas is probably the La Garita Caldera associated with a “Supervolcano” erupting about 28 Ma (location: east of Creede). The caldera is huge, something like 22 by 47 miles. The major ejecta from the La Garita explosion is termed the Fish Creek Tuff, a dacite by composition (high silica content). Geologists believe the Fish Creek Tuff occupies an area of ~1200 cubic miles. In contrast the eruption of Mt. Saint Helens in 1980 produced ~0.25 cubic miles of ejecta. (Steven and others, 1976),

Around 25-26 Ma another volcano in the Creede area (current geography) blew its stack and then subsided forming a caldera. This action allowed mineral-rich hydrothermal solutions to rise toward the surface, cooling, and then depositing the rich metallic ores that later produced silver, lead, zinc, and other metals. Along with these ores the hot solutions cooled into quartz, including the lavender to purple, band of quartz termed the Amethyst Vein, and the sowbelly agate.

MinDat (November 2024) lists 95 different minerals from the Creede Mining District obtained from about 100 mines and prospects. However, most of the wealth came from the Holy Moses Mine (discovery mine), Empress Mine, the Amethyst Vein mines: Amethyst Mine, Bachelor Mine, Commodore Mine with the OH Vein, P Vein, Commodore #5 Mine, and the Happy Thought Mine, the Last Chance Mine, Nelson Tunnel, and the Park Regent Mine. Although production figures are a little fuzzy, the Creede District produced about 9,000 tons of lead, 2000+ tons of silver, 4,000 tons of zinc and lessor amounts of other minerals. Today the District is still in the mining business; however, the source of the “ore” is U. S. currency pulled from the pockets of thousands of visitors.  

I picked up this specimen due to numerous, small, gemmy, sparkling, terminated quartz crystals.  These sparks host several darker, almost appearing black, crystals of sphalerite (zinc sulfide) along with a couple of translucent crystals of greenish sphalerite.Width FOV ~6 mm. Collecting was in the "5th level, Commodore Mine."

This specimen appears to be group of goofy looking quartz crystals. Actually the quartz is amethyst with a manganese coating collected from the Last Chance Mine. Width FOV ~6.2 cm.

 Nice, semi-translucent, honey colored crystals of sphalerite with dull gray cubes of galena (lead sulfide)m collected from the Commodore Mine. Width FOV ~4.5 cm.

Interestingly, the mineral creedite [Ca₃Al₂(SO₄)(OH)₂F₈ · 2H₂O] did not come from the Creed Mining District but from the Colorado Fluorspar Company Mine at Wagon Wheel Gap about 10 miles southeast of Creede. The mine was active from 1911 to 1950 and produced fluorite for use as a flux in the open-hearth furnaces at the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company's steel mill in Pueblo, Colorado.

Wire silver covered wit small nodules of acanthite (silver sulfide) and chalcopyrite (copper-iron sulfide).  Collected from the Last Chance Mine. Width FOV ~6-7 mm.

Beautiful, partially tarnished wire silver with a "peeling" top. Length of specimen ~1.1 cm. The Creede Mining District produces some of the best wire silver in the world.

One is never wholly conscious of the greed hidden in one's heart until one hears the sweet sound of silver. . R. Zafon.

BLACK DIAMONDS FROM MICHIGAMME

 It is tough to be a diamond in a rhinestone world! Dolly Parton

 I suspect that most rockhounds have a garnet or hundred in their collection. These silicate minerals have been used as gemstones for millennia, as well as having numerous uses in industry. Collectors love garnets since they are usually easy to identify by their red to reddish brown color (or green or black or pink or violet), by their hardness of ~6.5 to 7.5 Mohs, their crystal habit that is often 12 sided rounded dodecahedrons, and their occurrence in high temperature metamorphic rock like schists, igneous rocks such as granite, and detrital sediments such as sands. The more serious, or even semiserious, collectors define the general garnet formula as X₃Y₂(SiO₄)_3.  This formula is then used to differentiate the 1) Pyralspite Garnets where aluminum fills the Y site: the iron aluminum Almandine, the magnesium aluminum Pyrope, and the manganese aluminum Spessartine and 2) the Ugrandite Garnets where calcium fills the X site: calcium iron Andradite, the calcium aluminum grossular, and the calcium chromium uvarovite. These two major groups are actually solid solution series with intermediate garnet varieties and several mixed cation varieties. Chemists also experiment with several synthetic varieties of garnets where new elements substitute  for silicon in SiO₂ part of the chemical formula.

The fat, quarter-size crystal I want to describe in this post is not one of the common, shiny, dark red, iron-rich, well-defined dodecahedrons of almandine---although it used to be! The specimen was collected from the Michigamme Mine in Marquette Michigan and that locality provided the clue to its description. Greenish black to black chamosite has pseudomorphed the classic dodecahedral crystal of almandine. 

 

A 12 sided dodecahedron of chamosite ps. almandine. Width FOV 1.9 cm.

Chamosite is the iron rich member of the chlorite group of minerals, a hydrous iron aluminum silicate (Fe²⁺)₅Al(Si,Al)₄O₁₀(OH,O)_8.  As a sheet silicate it has a laminar shape similar to the mics. These sheets are usually greenish gray to brown to greenish black in color and are translucent to transparent, and soft (~3 Mohs), and flexible. The luster is usually dull to pearly. Chamosite is in solid solution with clinochlore, its magnesium analog, and both commonly occur in sedimentary iron formations.

 The chlorites, including chamosite, are part of the “clay minerals”, and as such, have very tiny crystals that are often earthy in appearance. In my specimen chamosite has altered, disrupted, and changed the internal lattice and structure of the almandine; however, the external shape, a dodecahedron, has remained. It remains beyond my pay grade to understand exactly “why” or “what caused” the almandine to be replaced by chamosite.

The most famous of the chamosite ps. almandine specimens have been found in the dump piles of the Michigamme Iron Mine, "Marquette Iron Range," in Marquette County, Michigan. Termed “Black Diamonds” by the miners, these very hard specimens were a pain in the derriere for the ore crushers. However, historical accounts noted that local entrepreneurs sold the black diamonds to visitor and tourists, especially those on the trains stopping at the Michigamme Railroad Depot. A note on my specimen stated it was collected ca. 1900.

 Location of the Marquette Iron Range. Public Domain map courtesy of W. F. Cannon, USGS.

The Michigamme Mine, from ~1872 to 1905, produced perhaps, I don’t have good figures, a million tons of iron ore from the Proterozoic Negaunee Iron Formation and the overlying Michigamme Formation. The cherty ore pay rocks were hematite-rich with secondary magnetite and grunerite. I also saw a note that recent Michigan road construction crews have covered the dump piles of the mine with a new road. The reporters were lamenting the loss of again collecting these magnificent black diamonds.

It is more fitting for a man to laugh than to lament over it.

                        Seneca the Younger

 

Almandine garnet crystals on gray-green schist. Public Domain photograph courtesy of Didier Descouens.           

 

CHASIN' THE BLUES WITH JAKE, ELWOOD, KEVIN, BILL, AND BOB

 THIS POST WAS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED 3-4 YEARS AGO AND HAS BEEN IN DRAFT FORM FOR AN UNKNOWN TIME. IN SCROLLING THROUGH MY POSTS I DISCOVERED IT AND THOUGHT IT NEEDED TO SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY.

Sprays of blue brochanite on quartz terminations (photomicrograph). Width FOV ~1 cm. Photo: Mike Nelson

 

And the idea of just wandering off to a cafe with a notebook and writing and seeing where that takes me for a while is just bliss. J. K. Rowling

Movie Poster, Public Domain, photographer unknown.

In this time of the Covid-19 pandemic and self-isolation my mind wanders, as do the minds of several rockhound friends. That wandering activity is not a “bad thing” as most of us have some degree of ”pandemic depression.  Listen to the advice of newscaster Diane Sawyer,  I've always found a cure for the blues is wandering into something unknown, and resting there, before coming back to whatever weight you were carrying. Between wandering I try to keep busy with other chores (I am tired of raking leaves) and activities.  I read a new book about every three days or so, play with the minerals, devour the newspaper, write letters to the editor (few are published), write/read several hours a day, watch a little TV (mostly older “happy” movies with such phrases as: Jake: That Night Train's a mean wine) , exercise a little, and listen to the oldies music channel : Elwood: What sort of music do you usually have here?  Claire: Oh we got both kinds, We got country, AND western. As you can probably surmise, I have a weird sense of humor and enjoy watching the Blues Brothers: I have four fried chickens and a coke. OK you need the see the two movies to understand the humor of Jake and Elwood!

 

Kyanite, a metamorphic aluminum silicate from Brazil. Photo: Kevin Witte.

Blue halite from the Delaware Basin, New Mexico.  Cube ~2.5 cm. X 2,5 cm. Photo: Mike Nelson.

 

Photomicrograph banded chalcedony left grading into blue chalcedony or silica infused chrysocolla surrounding black tenorite.  Notice green ?chalcedony encased in the blue.  Width of photo ~1.2 cm. Photo: Mike Nelson.

 

My days are not strenuous but are not too exciting either; however, we have food and shelter and family wellness and for this I am happy.  And, as you might suppose I am “retired” with Social Security and do not hold an actual working position and that certainly skews my activities and thinking.  One of the good things about my life is that I am learning much, not only about minerals, but about the world in general, how a virus operates, a new word every day, how bars form a significant part of our social wellbeing, about economics as the price of groceries heads upwards while gasoline trends down, and how scientists are taking a bum rap with this pandemic.  Personally, I am waiting for scientists to conquer the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

Blue-green microcline var. amazonite collected Lake George area Colorado (top), Galway, Ireland (bottom). Photo: Bob Landgraft, bottom; Kevin Witte, top.

 

Lapis Lazuli, metamorphic rock composed of sulfur-rich hauyne (in the Sodalite Group) with lesser amounts of calcite and pyrite.  Photo: Kevin Witte.

 

 

Lazulite a magnesium, iron, aluminum phosphate from Rapid Creek, Yukon, Canada. Width of crystal ~3 mm. Often confused with Lapis. Photo: Mike Nelson

But as I said, my mind tends to wander and this week, for some strange reason, my thoughts moseyed over to the color blue and all sorts of items popped into my mind, like: what is your favorite color?  For me it is blue.  As John Lennon once sang, “The sun is up, the sky is blue” or Judy Garland’s “Somewhere over the rainbow. Skies are blue.” Thinking about blue: 1) there are more songs with blue is the lyrics than any other color; 2) blue is the only color to have a genre of music named after it, The Blues; 3) if one of our 50 states primarily votes for the Democrat presidential candidate, it is a “blue state” 4) and so it goes. As for music:

Blue

Oh, so lonesome for you

Why can’t you be blue over me

Blue

Bill Mack but a big hit by LeAnn Rimes

 

Well it's one for the money, well it's two for the show

Well it's three to get ready, now go, cat go

But don't you step on my blue suede shoes

Well you can do anything but lay off of my blue suede shoes

Carl Perkins or Elvis Pressley

 

Devil with the blue dress, blue dress, blue dress,

Devil with the blue dress on

Mitch Ryder

 

Blues stay away from me

Uh-uh-uh, blues why don't you let me be

I don't know why you keep a-hauntin' me. and I guess that's why

Delmore Brothers

 

Got the blues, got the blues

Got the blues, got the St. Louis blues

Louis Prima

 

 

A poster, source unknown, advertising the Delmore Brothers.

 

Namibia

Namibia.

Lake George area, Colorado.

Fluorite, calcium fluoride. Italy. Photos above: Kevin Witte

Fluorite, calcium fluoride. Photo: Bob Landgraft.

What about your favorite Blues genre or blue in the lyrics song?  Do rockhounds have a favorite?  Well, as an ole rock and roller like me (my age is certainly showing) Carl Perkins and Mitch Ryder are tough to beat.  But my all-time favorite is the Delmore Brothers, “Blues stay away from me.”  The music is very haunting (probably because of the tenor four string guitar and the harmonica of Wayne Raney, but it brings back memories of my youth when Saturday night dances were scattered across the rural areas of Kansas. Those dances usually presented a “big band” sound, or “hillbilly” music; rock and roll generally was confined to high school dances.  In the days before cable TV high school or “town team” sporting events, and local dances were the major sources of entertainment in rural parts of our country. Yea, I know very few readers have heard a recording by the Delmore Brothers!  But consider they were stars of the Grand Ole Opry in the 1930s and wrote more than 1000 songs. Perhaps Bob Dylan summed it up best: “The Delmore Brothers, God I really loved them! I think they’ve influenced every harmony I’ve tried to sing.”  So, there you know some of my strange secrets! Take a peek at this youtube recording:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YUk9UDoVyKk

 

Aquamarine, Pakistan. Photo: Kevin Witte.

Aquamarine, Namibia.  Photo: Kevin Witte

Maybe you have a favorite "blue" movie?  Who could forget The Blues Brothers--It's 106 miles to Chicago, we've got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.  Perhaps Blue Velvet, The Blue Lagoon, Blue Hawaii, or the IMAX film the Blue Planet? But again, I am showing my age.

 

Plumbogummite with pyromorphite, China.  Photo: Kevin Witte.

Barite, Hartsel, Colorado.  Photo: Kevin Witte.

So, what about your favorite blue mineral?  I presume a large segment of the rockhound population would immediately state azurite, the copper carbonate. Others might spout turquoise or zoisite (tanzanite), opal, aquamarine, or numerous others. So, it popped into my head, since we do not have club meetings, ask members of the CSMS to send me photos of their favorite blue minerals.  I was expecting about 50 bored rockhounds to flood the emails! But it appears that most members must be occupied with other important activities and I sincerely thank Kevin Rockhounding the Rockies Witte, the guy who knows about fluorite Bob Landgraft, and Mr. Lapidary Tool Man Bill Kern.  But most of all I thank John Emery, the fantastic Pick & Pack Editor for allowing me to add rather frivolous material to a mostly serious newsletter.  However, the activity perked up my mind and perhaps readers might find a little humor to help put a damper on “pandemic fatigue”.  So, thanks John.

   

Azurite with malachite collected Arizona 1980s.  Photo: Bill Kern.

Quartz, enhanced (radiation?) to form "blue Quartz."  Photo: Bill Kern.

Azurite with Malachite, Cuba, New Mexico.  Photo: Kevin Witte.

I have espoused my views on blue minerals with numerous Blog postings and today have a couple of new, blue, copper arsenates: guanacoite and arhbarite.  You aren’t familiar with them? Neither was I until I found them in a dusty drawer of a small rock and mineral store and started reading.

Arhbarite, a hydrated copper magnesium arsenate [Cu₂Mg(AsO₄)(OH)₃], 
gets its “strange” name from the Type Locality in Morocco, the Arhbar (orAghbar) Mine.  It usually has a dark blue color, a vitreous to sub-vitreous luster, a blue streak, and often forms as botryoidal cluster of radially grown crystals.  However, at times the crystals are so tiny that the mineral appears massive. Arhbarite forms in the oxidized zone of polymetallic ore deposits due to percolating hydrothermal fluids and is usually associated with other copper arsenates such as conichalcite and guanacoite.  Arhbarite is a rare mineral only found in two localities, the Type and in Guanaco in Chile.

In fact, the “strange” name for the second mineral, guanacoite, comes from its Type Locality in the El Guanaco Mine (Atacama Desert, Chile).  The mine produces gold (primary commodity), silver, and copper (chalcocite, bornite, enargite, and covellite) from Eocene rhyolite.  It is both a subsurface and surface mine. In addition, the Mine is a source for numerous and colorful blue and green copper minerals, including copper arsenates.

Dark blue massive arhbarite vug (top) with light blue guanacoite  prismatic and bladed crystals (bottom).  Length (vertical in photo) of both minerals ~3 mm. Photo: Mike Nelson

Closeup of above photomicrograph. Photo: Mike Nelson.

Dark blue arhbarite surrounded by prismatic crystals of guanacoite.  Maximum width of blue mass ~1 mm. Photo: Mike Nelson. Guanacoite is similar to arhbarite in that it is a hydrated copper magnesium arsenate except it has additional water [Cu2Mg3(AsO4)2(OH)4-4H2O]. It has a pale blue to blue color, a white to light blue streak but most important for identification, it usually occurs as prismatic, acicular to bladed, translucent crystals.  Guanacoite is often found as tiny blades lining, or associated with, vugs of arhbarite.  Again, it is a rare mineral only known from the Type Locality, Morocco, and Spain.    The copper zinc carbonate, rosasite (R) and the arsenate mixite (M) from the Tintic district..  FOV ~ 1 cm. Photo: Mike Nelson.