BLACK HILLS: ROSCHERITE & MONTGOMERYITE. MAY 1961

 

May 1961.  High School graduation: I spent my post graduation summer working, playing baseball, fishing, and did I say working. Kansas summers are hot and dusty but the summer after high school graduation was different and sort of magical for the girls were beautiful and dreamy and my mind was full of wondering--what would college bring?  Where would my friends settle?  Would I see them again?  Was I prepared for college (not so much the first year)?  What would it mean moving out of "home"? Would I make the college basketball team (not a chance but the program paid for my tuition and books)?  All summer long I listened to the Hot 100 hits on an AM radio (no FM around)---mostly at night on that magic station in Oklahoma City, KOMA, 1520 on your dial.

Think left and think right and think low and think high. Oh, the thinks you can think up if only you try!       Dr. Seuss

As one ages, they begin to contemplate on what has been, and what could have been, in their life.  What sort of regrets does one have? What were the good things, and the bad things?  I certainly have not led a perfect life but do have very few major regrets about how it has played out.  Thoughts about my past have been in my mind “big time” this week since it has been 60 years since my high school graduation.  Wow, 60 years have zoomed by since 17 bright eyed, small town kids marched across the stage to pick up their diploma and flip their tassels.  Of course, kids across the country were doing the same things, many on that particular night in May.  After the event I zipped home, collected graduation cards, often with a couple of bucks, from several aunts and uncles gathered to drink coffee and eat my mother’s cake, and then off I went with my friends to eat chicken fried steak at Bettys Fried Chicken restaurant in Salina, about 25 miles away.  The next day I dutifully reported to work at my father’s gasoline station and that started a summer like most---6.8 days of working each week with baseball games many nights and “dad can I borrow the car” on Saturday nights. I also was anticipating attending college in the fall.

For other classmates, graduation meant different events---some chose wedding bells, a few males enlisted in the Armed Forces, some went to “Business College” or a college/university and others “found a job.” All 12 males in the class were very aware that if you continued on in higher education you “made you grades” or expected to get drafted. Those who chose the work route had an even shorter time of freedom from Uncle Sam calling.  

My current thoughts are revolving around how I lost track of many/most of my classmates—all 16 of them.  How could that happen?  Well, we each just went our separate ways.  Oh sure, the first few years I attended a couple of weddings and saw a few over the Memorial Day Holiday, but most just seemed to fade out of my life and moved on with theirs.  There were a few that I never saw again after that post-graduation summer!  At our 50^th year celebration there were 12 of us present---but again none of those that I had not seen in 50 years; none were deceased.  The 60^th was a smaller event with 6 alums present; two were deceased. (I was absent due to earlier arranged plans).  

Four years after the 1961 event, it was much the same as a small-town kid walked across the stage in front of his parents and two brothers, received his college diploma and flipped his tassel.  That graduation was sort of sad for me as I fully realized that I would never see many of my close friends again.  The scattering of classmates was far and wide.  However, by this time I had a career path in mind as almost immediately I headed for Colorado State University to attend summer geology field camp in preparation for graduate school at the University of South Dakota.

It’s time to say goodbye, but I think goodbyes are sad and I’d much rather say hello. Hello to a new adventure.  Ernie Harwell

The decision to attend USD was one of those that was a “good one.”  Absolutely no regrets.  I was a small-town kid who attended a smaller state undergraduate college and USD was situated in a small town and was full of small-town kids and a small graduate program—I think there were five of us.  One got much attention from the faculty.

My memories of USD are many; however, they would fill many pages of this posting and drive away most readers.  I will share that my roommate was a great fit and went on to have a notable geology career in a well-known university.   Our immediate problem was housing and so he sent his mother over to find an apartment.  She picked out a basement in a house in a nice part of town that was being remodeled into an apartment and signed us up.  We arrived and found that the remodeling was several weeks behind schedule, so we washed dishes in the bathroom sink and laid our closet clothes on chairs.  One night we came home, and the apartment owner and his buddy were nailing up ceiling plasterboard---sort of.  They had finished a big bottle of Four Roses and had much trouble hitting the nails.  The ceiling was full of round holes!  That called for a midnight escape!

Our next domicile was a small mobile home with a fuel oil heater that needed to be started by throwing in a hunk of lighted toilet paper.  Yep, that was quite the stove.  One morning I awoke really cold and my roomie had moved his single bed/cot to a location in front of the oven trying to keep warm.  Seems as if the ole oil heater was not working, and snow was drifting in around the windows and doors.  That situation called for?---another midnight escape.

After couch surfing for a few days, we finally picked up a suitable dwelling but at an inflated rate.  We paid, went hungry a day each week, but survived until summer work came along with the State Geological Survey.  Since our work was out of town, we received $5 per day for motel lodging. The geological work was interesting as we were looking at past and future landslides in the Cretaceous Pierre Shale in preparation for the construction of Interstate 70.  I also discovered a young lady that is still an important part of my life---one of those no regrets item. 

No regrets about the rainbow that flashed into my life in South Dakota.

I have noted before in this Blog that the Black Hills of South Dakota are sort of magical for me.  That first year at the University my friends would invite me to spend a weekend with them at their parent’s home in the Hills.  Wandering around the Hills was a fascinating experience for a flatlander like me.  Even today I still find time for a yearly camping trip to western South Dakota.

All of this irrelevant chit chat leads me to the geology part of this posting.  The Hills are full of old mines and prospects and glory holes.  Some are available for prospecting and collecting while others are off limits.  The granite and pegmatites around Custer in the southern Hills were often mined for mica (often muscovite, both scrape and large crystals), feldspar (mostly potassium feldspar), and beryl (beryllium). A short journey to the north lithium, found in spodumene, was a major mineral commodity while tin was found in a few mines and later tantalum/niobium. Rose quartz, used as decorative stone, was available at many localities, but especially just to the south of Custer. Today I believe Pacer Minerals operating out of Custer is the only mineral commodity mining operation in the southern Hills, and perhaps the entire Black Hills.  They produce high purity muscovite for use in industry, lost circulation mica for the oil drilling companies, and high-grade potassium feldspar for the ceramic industry.  It is the only large K feldspar mine in the country and uses the marketing name Custer Spar.

Rockhounds that explore the Hills today not only collect the easily accessible pegmatite minerals like schorl tourmaline, quartz, and feldspar but pound the Paleozoic limestones looking for Teepee Canyon Agate, the source rock for the famous Fairburn Agates found out on the adjacent plains.  However, some of the more serious collectors scour the old pegmatite pits looking for minerals suitable for micromounts---the really tiny crystals, and especially for the often brightly colored phosphates.

Perhaps the pegmatite most studied in the Hills is one exposed at the Tip Top Mine in the Custer Mining District. This former beryllium mine is the Type Locality for something like 12 colorful phosphate minerals and tens of others are mostly hidden away in vugs and fractures; most are microscopic, but all seem to have beautiful crystals.  I have written about several of these phosphates in this Blog.  A couple of years ago I had a personal tour of the Tip Top with noted mineralogist and mine owner, Tom Loomis.  I was looking for some of the tiny Tip Top phosphates but especially for a nifty spray of tiptopite! But alas, no luck in acquiring this rare mineral specimen.  What I did acquire, however, was several pounds of quarry rock for later examinationas  back in Colorado.

Periodically I bring out a rock or two and examine the surface with a loupe and if no nifty minerals are present then pound it with a crack hammer and start over with a new examination. Sometimes you win, most times you lose! However, the wins are often fantastic if a small phosphate is present (I am still looking for tiptopite).

All phosphates have the PO₄ anion with an oxidation state of 3- (phosphorus with a 5+ and 4 oxygens each with a 2- state leaves a total anion state of 3-).  Among rocks and minerals (to differentiate from chemically synthesized forms) primary phosphates crystalize from fluids in late-stage magmatic crystallization, for example the mineral triphylite (a lithium iron phosphate). Secondary phosphates form many colorful specimens from the primary phosphates as they are altered by aqueous solutions and oxidation into minerals like strengite (hydrated iron phosphate).

One of the rare secondary phosphates is the beryllium-rich mineral roscherite [Ca₂Mn₅Be₄(PO₄)₆(OH)₄-6H₂O].  Like other rare secondary phosphates in the southern Black Hills, roscherite is found in miarolitic cavities in the complex granitic pegmatites. 

Roscherite spheres on quartz.  Width FOV ~5 mm.

 
Roscherite usually appears as tiny rounded spherical grains with a variety of colors possible—red, orange, brown, brownish yellow, yellowish green.  They have a measured hardness of ~4.5 (Mohs), sort of a greasy to resinous luster, and leave a white streak.  Tom Loomis at Dakota Matrix has stated that the Roscherites at Tip Top are crystallized in a range of colors and the lilac colored crystals may be Zanazziite, the Mg member…I have never seen better Roscherite than the Tip Top mine. The Roscherite group is growing, but as of yet, all Roscherites from the Tip Top mine remain plain Roscherite. It is difficult to discern the different Roscherites based on color alone, and there are several colors at the Tip Top mine (purple, orange, black). My specimen recently brought to light has tens of tiny greenish spheres clustered together on a quartz matrix.

A second specimen removed from the rough matrix revealed small crystals of montgomeryite, again a rare secondary phosphate perhaps best known from the Tip Top Mine [Ca₄MgAl₄(PO₄)₆(OH)₄-12H₂O]---see Posting December 19, 2018.  

Mostly transparent, striated, and terminated crystals of montgomeryite.  Some have shades of salmon red-orange. Width FOV ~5 mm. The matrix of microcline feldspar has a druse of really tiny (submillimeter) rhombohedral crystals of whitlockite (tricalcium phosphate) with some crystal faces reflecting light.

Montgomeryite generally occurs as small lath-like crystals that are flattened, striated, elongated and capped by a pyramid.   Crystals are translucent, have a vitreous luster, and a hardness of ~4.0 (Mohs).  At the type locality at the Little Green Monster Mine in Utah the crystals are generally colorless to pale green and occur in nodules that are of sedimentary origin.  At the Tip Top Mine the lath-like crystals are colorless to some sort of a red to orange to salmon to pale yellow color and are associated with several other secondary phosphate minerals found in oxidized phosphate nodules occurring in granite pegmatites (associated with the Harney Peak Granite).

MAY 1961 MAJOR EVENTS

(from Wikipedia)

Graduation ceremonies were held at Tescott High School (Kansas). 

The federal minimum wage was raised to $1.25 per hour.

Civil rights activists started their Freedom Ride via bus through the South.

Alan  Shepard became the first American in space--non orbital 19 minute ride.

Nikita Khrushchev accepted President Kennedy's invitation to meet in Vienna (June 3) to discuss the future of Berlin).

President Kennedy gave his famous speech to Congress committing the US to land a man on the moon before the end of the decade. 

 

 

REDO #2 TUCSON: COPPER, ANATASE, VESUVIANITE; GROSSULAR & TITANITE

 

In a previous posting I noted that a two-day excursion to the Tucson 2021 Redo was enjoyable and I came home with a few treasures!  Of course, I consider most of my buys as 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. If you have everything the world can give - pleasure, possessions, power - but lack peace of mind, you can never 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 the minerals.  That is one reason I enjoy the professional, but semi-hard core, journals like Mineralogical Record and Rocks and Minerals. I joined the Baltimore Mineral Society to get a non-western U.S. perspective on geology and minerals and now read several eastern mineral club newsletters if they 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.    Henry David Thoreau

At the Show I was able to pick up a hunk (5 cm. X 8 cm) of mostly native copper with a little calcite and perhaps a few other minerals. It had been cleaned with acid so the copper would show and looked like the nuggets from Michigan that originally had been released from the Precambrian basalt by Pleistocene glaciers.  However, my purchased specimen came from the Blue Ridge portion of Pennsylvania, a state that I did not realize produced copper. The Pennsylvania Geological Survey noted that a small area (about 1- by 5-mile belt) contains trace- to minor amounts of native copper in Adams and Franklin Counties and my specimen was labeled as collected from Pine Mountain, Adams County. This is a general location of native copper deposits lying west of Blue Ridge summit.  MinDat notes the presence of native copper in epidotic rhyolite, massive quartz and associated secondary copper minerals.  No specific quarry or prospect was noted with my specimen.  Unlike the Michigan nuggets that were released and transported by glaciers, the Pennsylvania copper belt fell ~35 miles short of glacial activity so copper nuggets were never released from their enclosing metabasalt (part of the Precambrian Catoctin Formation). The Pennsylvania Geological Survey has identified eight named mines, and numerous small prospects, that are known in the native-copper belt, but production has always been minimal. Unlike many copper deposits in the western U.S. that are associated with intrusions and hydrothermal activity, R.A. Landy, in a 1961 unpublished Ph.D. thesis at Penn State, believed[M1]  that the native copper deposits were developed from the rearrangement and reconcentration of the copper originally present in the rock itself (the metamorphosed basalt).  The original basalt came from flows resulting from crustal expansion in the late Precambrian—continents or proto-continents pulling apart.

Copper nugget from Pine Mountain, Pennsylvania.  Width ~7.5 cm.

I also picked up four specimens from Lehman Minerals, collectors on the opposite side of the country—the White and Inyo Mountains of California.  Chris Lehman is headquartered in Bishop, the only city in Inyo County and situated at the head of Owens Valley between the Sierra Nevada (on the west) and the White Mountains (on the east).  The Whites are interesting from several points of view including the presence of Late Proterozoic (latest Precambrian) rocks that represent sediment shed off the early North American (in today’s geography) continent.  These rocks confused geologists for decades as they often contained fossils older than the Cambrian trilobites (and commonly were soft bodied).  Were they Cambrian in age? Or Precambrian? They were often referred to as being Eocambrian in age, but stratigraphers finally settled on Ediacaran (see Posting April 13, 2017) for that particular period of time.

Above these Precambrian rocks is a thick section of mostly shallow water marine sedimentary rocks of Cambrian (a continuation from the Ediacaran) and Ordovician age. However, the Ordovician sedimentary rocks, along with a thick section of later Mesozoic metasedimentary and metavolcanic rocks were brought into the Whites (current geography) from the northeast sliding along large scale thrust faults.  Geologists call these foreign rocks allochthonous rocks.  This turmoil continued and in the Mesozoic all sorts of crap broke loose as the Pacific Plate and others (mostly microcontinents) were banging into the North American Plate with the former being subducted beneath the latter (although some western rocks were stuck onto the North American Plate).  The subduction, with later heat and melting at depth, resulted in large scale plutonic events (magma rising towards the surface but cooling and crystallizing before reaching the surface).  Such was the case in the White Mountains but to the west the Sierra Nevada plutonic event was even more massive as these mountains are much larger that the White Mountains.  The collision of these plates rippled across western North America creating orogenic events as it proceeded.  The Cenozoic was marked by two major “happenings”: massive volcanism, especially in the mid to late Tertiary; and the crustal extension resulting in the creation of the fault block mountains of the Basin and Range.  In fact, the White Mountains are the westernmost range of this physiographic province.

The above explanation of the geology of the White Mountains is not very understandable and is critically short on details.  However, there are hundreds of professional papers scattered in libraries, and sometimes on the Web, that would be tough to synthesize in a posting like this.  The geology is complicated!

I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when looked at in the right way did not become still more complicated.     Paul Anderson

Chris Lehman has a collecting locality east of Bishop that MinDat refers to as the Lehman Anatase Prospect. I am fairly certain two of my four specimens came from that location; however, the other two specimens are listed as from the “White or Inyo Mountains.”   I suppose they are proprietary locations. 

One specimen from the Lehman Prospect consists of water clear and terminated quartz crystals arranged in a spray.  The anatase occurs as inclusions within the quartz with additional anatase crystallizing on the exterior. The Quartz Page defines three types of inclusions in quartz: 1) Protogenetic where the minerals formed before the quartz and were engulfed by the growing quartz; 2) Syngenetic where the inclusions and the quartz grow simultaneously; and 3) Epigenetic where during the growth of the quartz crystal there is a pause that allows new incompatible elements into the crystal structure.  The specimen from the Lehman shows syngenetic crystals of anatase embedded in the quartz and are termed phantom crystals.

Water clear quartz crystals mounted on a pin (white).  Note anatase inclusions and external growths. Length of largest quartz crystal ~1.2 cm.

A second specimen from Lehman is a larger quartz crystal covered with quite tiny greenish brown crystals of anatase with a few crystals of adularia (potassium aluminum silicate).  The large crystal may also be included; however, the exterior growth prevents peeking into the quartz.

Quartz crystal with heavy anatase inclusions and upper crystal face covered with very tiny crystals.  Note two adularia crystals.  Length of large quartz crystal ~3.5 cm.

Adularia crystals each about 2 mm.

Green anatase crystals ~.5 mm, or less, in length.

Anatase is a titanium oxide, one of three polymorphs of TiO₂—the other two being rutile and brookite.  There seems to be at least three other forms of titanium oxide that were identified in meteorites and therefore are exceedingly rare. Anatase is the least stable of the polymorphs and forms at lower temperatures and at later stages in crystallization, often associated with quartz and adularia. Belonging to the Tetragonal Crystal System, anatase usually appears as tabular or “double pyramid” crystals and are usually “green” or brown (although crystals may have a variety of colors).  It has a metallic luster is essentially opaque with a hardness of ~6 (Mohs). Titanium oxide is mostly found in metamorphic rocks and pegmatites.

The small adularia crystals [KAlSi₃O₈] belong to the Feldspar Group and actually are a low temperature variety of orthoclase (a potassium or K Feldspar).  Adularia crystals commonly are glassy and transparent and often tough to identify unless they have a moonstone sheen and play of colors.

A third specimen is from the nearby Inyo Mountains and is a single, prismatic, pretty ugly, crystal of epidote [(Ca₂)(Al₂Fe⁾(Si₂O₇)(SiO₄)O(OH)]  with an attached tiny, twinned crystal of  titanite, a calcium titanium silicate (CaTi(SiO₄)O), formally called sphene due to its wedge shape.  Crystals have an adamantine luster, are translucent to transparent with a white streak and a hardness of ~5.5 (Mohs).  It appears in igneous and metamorphic rocks. Not an exceptional specimen but one that is interesting with the attachment.

Titanite twin attached to epidote.  Total length of epidote ~8mm.

The 4^th Lehman specimen is a group of vesuvianite crystals on a matrix of grossular (Garnet Group).  The vesuvianite [Ca₁₀(Mg,Fe)₂Al₄(SiO₄)₅(Si₂O₇)₂(OH,F)₄] forms beautiful crystals that are either long prismatic and columnar, or short pyramids, with a greenish yellow to yellow brown color.  They have a vitreous luster, are brittle and fracture easily, and a hardness of ~6+ (Mohs). Most crystals on this specimen are fairly translucent.  Vesuvianite usually form in skarn deposits (limestone subject to contact metamorphism). See a previous Posting, November 18, 2012, for additional information.

Crystals of vesuvianite.  Width FOV ~6mm. 

Mass of grossular garnets.  Width FOV ~6mm.

Grossular is a calcium aluminum silicate [Ca₃Al₂(SiO₄)₃] that often is some sort of a green color since it is named for the color of gooseberries. It is a common mineral in contact metamorphic zones associated with limestone, and is an associate of vesuvianite, wollastonite and diopside. 

The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.   Isaac Asimov