As I write this article on Thursday the 13th
of March, 2025, my mind keeps wandering to the celestial event of the month—the
Worm Moon, a Full Moon. The name, according to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, is due
to warming soil and the appearance of worm casts or even the appearance of
earth worms. But hold on, up here in the Northland the temperature may be a tad
too cool for earthworms in mid-March. Does 22 degrees F sound like earthworm
nirvana? So, a couple of more appropriate names for the March moon is Crow Moon
since Poe’s favorite bird is very busy cawing and telling the country that
Spring is on the way. That certainly seems the case in our plethora of trees
around here. In northern Wisconsin the native Ojibway refer to the March moon
as Snow Crust Moon. Sounds good as 40 degrees during the day tends to melt snow
while 22 degrees at night freezes it over and a crust forms.
No earthworms on the 19th!!
But the big event is that this a Full Moon is also a
Blood Moon, a total lunar eclipse—and it was a dandy. In this arrangement the
moon, earth, and sun are lined up and the earth’s shadow begins to creep across
the moon until the moon is completely covered, but is still visible. What happens
is that the earth’s atmosphere scatters some sunlight across the lunar surface
and at “totality” the moon appears a copper red or even a blood red. Really
spooky but also a spectacular event.
Here in the Northland, sometime shortly after 11:00
CDT the earth’s shadow started to creep across the moon, slowing getting larger
and larger until totality was reached about 1:30 AM. I observed the process
until about 2:00 AM but totality lasted until about 2:30 AM when the earth’s
shadow started to withdraw. The “neat” thing about the event is that we were in
a short term, major warming event in Wisconsin,
so I was able plop myself on the porch rocking chair with only a light jacket
and my binocs and experience this celestial event with a clear sky and
quietness. Wow, and double wow, since Thursday the 20th is the
Spring Equinox.
The copper red moon rang a little bell in
my head that reminded me of a Perky box containing the mercury mineral corderoite
that needed examination. The red connection is not copper related but because many
mercury minerals display some sort of a red color.
Although mercury has not been legally
mined in the U.S. since 1992, at one time our country had a substantial number
of operating mines. Most of these mines were in the far western US (see map) although
in terms of production per mine the Terlingua fields in the Big Bend area of
west Texas was substantial. I could not easily locate past production figures before
1992. In winding down the lack of mine production, much of of the production in the early 1990s was from
catching mercury as a byproduct in gold mining operations. The U.S. also
imported mercury and recovered the metal from recycling efforts. Today the use
of mercury in the US has greatly decreased due to its toxicity, environmental concerns,
and human health conditions. As noted on the map, most mercury mines were
located in California, Nevada, and Oregon.
Mercury was mined in Nevada from about 1907 (discovered then
at Antelope Springs and with mining beginning in 1914) until the early 1990’s.
The District mines produced from veins in Triassic limestone, dolomite,
conglomerate, and shale (Gray and others, 1969). Evidently these veins were
emplaced during the Miocene because of extensional magmatism (Noble and others,
1988). That is, Miocene extensional tectonics involved the stretching of
the earth’s crust producing what we know today as the Basin and Range
physiographic province.
Mercury mines in the U.S. None are active today. Map courtesy of Land Matters, a non-profit 501c3
charitable educational organization found at www.mylandmatters.org.
One of the best-known mercury mining
locations of later years was the Cordero--McDermitt Mines, Opalite District,
Humbolt County, Nevada. The McDermitt (including the Cordero and other smaller mines)
is just one of several mines that are located in the Opalite Mercury Mining
District that straddles the Nevada-Oregon State Line, The District
is associated with a volcanic caldera complex where eruption centered around a
Miocene age of ~16 Ma (Henry and others, 2016). The
original mercury mineralization was in the Cordero Rhyolite, but later
hydrothermal action deposited the metal into nearby lake or stream-deposited
tuff (volcanic ejecta) (Henry and others, 2016). Mercury in the caldera complex
was first mined in the 1970s and the operations ceased in 1990. The McDermitt
complex was the most important mercury producer in the Americas during the 20th century
producing 279,000 flasks to 1988 (geoconsultancy.com.au). The
minerals cinnabar, ~50%, (mercury sulfide HgS) and corderoite, ~50%, (mercury
sulfide chloride Hg3S2Cl2) yielded almost all
the mercury. However, there are several other mercury minerals present in minor
amounts.
Corderoite is another one of those mercury
minerals that appeared “later in life” as Eugene Ford and others did not described
it until 1974 from the Codero Mine. Of course, the Mine was very new at that point,
but the mineral had not been noted at other mercury localities. In addition to
corderoite, the Cordero Mine (McDermitt complex) is the Type Locality of these
other mercury minerals: alexearlite, kenhsuite, mikecoxite, and radtkeite.
When many rockhounds think of a “standard”
color for mercury minerals the bright cherry red of cinnabar probably comes to
mind, at least it does for me. Cinnabar was the mineral we always studied in
mineralogy courses and little did I know, until decades later, that less
abundant (that we did not observe in class) mercury minerals are various shades
of pink, orange, silvery-gray, brownish red, yellow, and even colorless. Interestingly,
many of these mercury minerals begin to darken, some irreversible, when exposed
to light sources as they are photosensitive. In the well-studied photosensitive
cinnabar, the first reaction to light, moisture and chloride ions is the change
to corderoite:
3HgS + 2Cl à Hg3S2Cl2 + S
Corderoite is also unstable when exposed to light and
oxygen and will degrade to calomel:
Hg3S2Cl2
+ 2Cl à Hg + 2S + Hg2Cl2
And finally, calomel will degrade into mercuric
chloride and metallic mercury (Keune and Boon, 2005; Radepont and others, 2011).
These reactions probably seem rather insignificant to rockhounds except to note
that most corderoite in the rock record is the result of the degradation of
cinnabar. However, to art historians and art conservators the chemistry behind
this darkening is extremely important. Vermilion, the red coloring made from
cinnabar perhaps as far back as 8000 B.C., was the primary red pigment during
the Renaissance Era until the 20th Century. So, conservators were greatly
concerned about beautiful red paints used by the masters (and others) in their majestic
works of art darkening with age. Keune and Boon (2005) determined that chlorine
salts in the atmosphere were the major culprits in darkening during the
degradation of cinnabar into elemental mercury. Museums are now able to
restrict moist air and chlorine from reaching the paintings and also to chose
specific light frequencies for the gallery illumination (Wogan, 2013).


Cherry red cinnabar degrading to pink corderoite. Matrix is opalite with white quartz and glassy hyolite opal. Bottom width FOV ~ 7mm. Top width FOV ~ 4 mm.
Corderoite is an isometric mineral
although individual cubic crystals are quite small, less than 2 mm, and quite
rare. Most occurrences of the mineral is as tiny grains, druse-like, on degrading
cinnabar. It usually is pink to pink red to orange pink color when fresh but as
it also degrades in light and moisture to a gray and finally black color. Meanwhile
it remains tough to identify except using the pink color and its relationship
to the degrading cinnabar. As noted above, the McDermitt complex has produced
corderoite (degrading cinnabar) from both the rhyolitic complex rocks and the original
tuffaceous lake sediments which today have consolidated to “opalite” with
angular fragments of rhyolite and tuff along with secondary amorphous silica
and others. In other words, it usually is not a nice looking rockhound mineral
but certainly was a critical mineral in the mining and production of mercury.
Want to know more about mercury? I would
suggest the USGS Circular 1248, Geologic Studies of Mercury by the U.S.
Geological Survey.
https://clu-in.org/download/contaminantfocus/mercury/geologic-studies-of-mercury-c-1248.pdf
REFERENCES CITED
Foord, E.E., Berendsen, P., and Storey, L.O. 1974,
Corderoite, first natural occurrence of α-Hg3S2Cl2, from the Cordero mercury
deposit, Humboldt County, Nevada. American Mineralogist, vol,.59, nos. 7-8.
Gray, J.E., M.G Adams, J.C. Crock, and P.M.
Theodorakos, 1999, Geochemical Data for Environmental Studies of Mercury Mines
in Nevada: U. S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 99-576.
Henry, C.D., Castor, S.B., Starkel, W.A., Ellis, B.S.,
Wolff, J.A., Laravie, J.A., McIntosh, W.C., and Heizler, M.T., 2017, Geology
and evolution of the McDermitt caldera, northern Nevada and southeastern
Oregon, western USA: Geosphere, v. 13, no. 4.
Keune, K. and Boon, J.J., 2005. Analytical imaging
studies clarifying the process of the darkening of vermilion in paintings.
Analytical Chemistry, vol. 77. No. 15.
Noble, D.C., J.K.
McCormack, E.H McKee, M.L. Silberman, and A.B. Wallace, A.B., 1988, Time of mineralization
in the evolution of the McDermitt Caldera Complex, Nevada-Oregon, and the relation
of Middle Miocene mineralization in the Northern Great Basin to coeval regional
basaltic magmatic activity: Economic Geology, vol. 83.
Radepont, M., De Nolf, W., Janssens, K., Van Der
Snickt, G., Coquinot, Y., Klaassen, L., and Cotte, M., 2011. The use of
microscopic X-ray diffraction for the study of HgS and its degradation products
corderoite (α-Hg3S2Cl2), kenhsuite (γ-Hg3S2Cl2) and calomel (Hg2Cl2) in
historical paintings: Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry vol. 26, no. 5.
Wogen, T., 2013, Mercury’s dark influence on art:
Chemistry World at: https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/mercurys-dark-influence-on-art/6735.article.