Here in the Wisconsin woods winter seemed to arrive suddenly in early November. We were in a nice fall weather pattern with moderating winds tumbling down the maple leaves while I tried to keep the piles from a heavy covering of the grass. Boats were still on the river targeting freshwater river sturgeons and catfish. The “smarter” residents of my small neighborhood were in short sleeves installing outside Christmas lights and decorations. Then one night I heard the wind whistle in and here came Old Man Winter with freezing temps and in a couple of weeks night temps below zero. Thanksgiving arrived with blustering cold winds and snow while my spouse, daughter and I washed pots and pans for three hours at the community dinner. Then additional white stuff arrived, and the snow blower was cranked up several times. The big post-Thanksgiving events were: 1) the full moon, AKA the Cold Moon, arriving on December 4 floating above the eastern River bluffs as it started its journey across the sky to the western bluffs; and 2) the appearance of the first ice fisherman on the backwaters—a sure sign that winter had “really” arrived. In fact, we seem to be in the middle of several polar vortices keeping the temps “chilly”! Today, the 16th of December, we are in a warm spell---the first time in several weeks the daytime temp was above freezing. Four days ago, the temp dropped down to at least 10 below with wind chills in the minus 20s. Hard water is here and the ice fishers are scattered on most bays, many snug in their little houses compete with heaters and TVs (to watch the Packers play football).
But the autumnal change to the cold season is a good thing for old rockhounds—I can hibernate in the downstairs office and play with minerals without being concerned about much outside yard work. And the first of December is a sure sign that the Tucson shows are but two months away. Last year I missed the shows due to “settling in” at our new abode in Wisconsin. Not so this coming season as Tucson here we come!
I am not a big spender at mineral shows but am usually happy with my buys/treasures although a few stinkers appear now and then. Remember, as Bob Jones coined the term, I am a frugal collector. I purchase less expensive specimens that “make me happy.” I am not collecting for exhibits, or even local mineral shows, but for specimens that I can study and learn from. Being a life-long learner is a high priority in my life! Life is too short to be anything but happy.
Happiness, true happiness, is an inner quality. It is a state of mind. If your mind is at peace, you are happy. If your mind is at peace, but you have nothing else, you can be happy. Dada Vaswani
Living in the Plains, Midwest, and West over the decades, I am not overly familiar with the geology of the Appalachian chain of mountains. Oh, I have driven through and camped several times, I can spout off the creating orogenic events, and the physiographic provinces, etc. but outside of a few famous collecting localities/mines I remain a novice learner when it comes to minerals. That is one reason I enjoy the professional, but semi-hard core, journals like Mineralogical Record and Rocks and Minerals. I joined mineral clubs inMaryland, Washington D.C., and eastern Canada to get a “non-western U.S. perspective” on geology and minerals and now read several eastern mineral club newsletters that are available on the Web. Life is interesting.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. Thoreau.
In rumbling around my basement office/storage I came across one of Willard Wulff’s specimens, gold no less, that I purchased a decade or so ago for about $3 at an estate sale. Willard W. Wulff Sr. was a Charter Member of the Colorado Springs Mineralogical Society who collaborated with Lazard Cahn to start the club in 1936. The specimen is mounted on a pedicle in a smaller Perky Box with handwritten labels in Wulff's very distinctive printing style. He acquired the specimen in 1962. I have a substantial number of Wulff's micromounts, in excess of 100, including several more gold mounts.
The gold was collected from the Maryland Mine, one of a group of gold mines-- the Ford, Anderson, Watson, and Maryland--- clustered in the southern section of Montgomery County, Maryland, near the town of Potomac just northwest of the Beltway near the Great Falls of the Potomac. Today, the Maryland, Ford and Anderson are part of the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal National Historic Park. These mines, along with at least thirty other gold mines and placers found in and around Montgomery County, are situated in the northern tip of a gold-bearing belt that extends in a shallow arc across the Piedmont from northeastern Alabama through northern Georgia, west central South Carolina, central North Carolina, central Virginia, and into south central Maryland. Within this region many gold mines were discovered and operated, beginning in the late eighteenth century, including the included the famous Dahlonega District of Georgia (Nagy and Parker, 2013), site of the first gold rush in the U.S. (1828) that resulted in forced removal of Native Americans (Trail of Tears), and the establishment of the Dahlonega Mint to mint gold coins (D mint mark) from 1838-1861).
Reverse of an 1843 gold half eagle struck at the Dahlonega Mint. Public Domain photo courtesy John Reich. Note small D variety mint mark.
The country rocks in the Maryland Mine area are complex, to say the least, that are part of the Neoproterozoic (~750 Ma) to Cambrian (~550 Ma???) (they really don’t know its exact age) Mather Gorge Formation (Wissahickon Schist during my classroom days) that formed as the Supercontinent Rodinia broke apart (creating the proto-Atlantic Ocean). Originally the rocks were deposited as clastic sedimentary rocks shed into emerging oceanic trenches but later were subjected to regional volcanism and metamorphism during the Taconic (roughly Ordovician ~450 Ma), Acadian (roughly Devonian ~400 Ma), and Alleghenian (toughly Permian ~290 Ma) Orogenies. Today the country rock seems a mixed-up mess of interlayered mica schist and metamorphosed graywacke cut by dikes, sills, and small irregular plugs of light-colored granite and, locally, of lamprophyre. I have always had a great deal of respect to the mapping geologists working in the Appalachians.
The Maryland Mine, and others in the area, exploited quartz veins covering an area of about .25 miles wide by 3 miles long and ranging from a few inches to 14 feet in thickness that are part. They may be part of the Mather Gorge Formation but were probably formed later when late-stage, silica-rich, hydrothermal waters invaded cracks and fissures in the country rock. The gold and sulfide solutions traveled along (Nagy and Parker, 2013).
Gold on quartz matrix from Maryland Mine. Width FOV ~ 7 mm.
The Maryland Mine has an interesting history. Although extraction started around 1867 and the mine officially closed in 1940 as WW II was looming, it seemed to never live up to its potential as stated by the promotors. In 80+ years the Mine underwent numerous owners and investors, but “unlimited riches” never seemed to evolve and soon a new owner took over with big dreams. From ~1940 to 1951 “locals” prospected, panned, and broke rocks looking for the gold lode. One ounce of gold was shipped in 1951. Interestingly local panners are still able to collect dust, and a few nuggets, in the area’s streams. However, the Mine, and its associated dumps and trenches, are part of a National Historic Park and any sort of collecting is prohibited.
REFERENCES CITED
Nagy,J. & F. J. Parker, 2013, The Maryland Mine: Maryland's last underground gold mine: Rocks and Minerals Vol. 88, No. 5
No comments:
Post a Comment