denvermagazine48mineralmagazine.com/The-Vug-Magazine-Issue-3.pdfserver, the Colorado Rockhounding site. If you want to make the ultimate tribute to your states mineral collecting history,

September 9-14 2008

Colorado Minerals is the theme of the 2008 Denver Gem and Mineral Show. The state is well known for its many fine minerals. Where and how can one find them? Many of the classic localities, of course, are no longer accessible; for the most part, the glory days of Colorado’s gold, silver, and base metal mining are past, and those who want specimens must look to dealers’ stocks and old time collections. However, localities for many of the minerals for which the state is best known are still open to field collecting.

The granite pegmatites of the Pikes Peak batholith offer potential collecting sites for many of Colorado’s best known minerals: smoky quartz, microcline var. amazonite, albite, topaz, fluorite, goethite, and others. The most highly mineralized areas within the thousand-square-mile batholith have many currently active mining claims, and a few classic sites (such as Crystal Peak) have always been on private land, but

there are still many opportunities to prospect for minerals on unclaimed land in the Pike National Forest. Famous areas within the batholith noted for their concentration of pegmatite dikes and miarolitic pockets include, naming them generally clockwise starting from the vicinity of Pikes Peak itself, Stove Mountain and Sentinel and Specimen Rocks; Crystal Park; Glen Cove; Florissant, Lake George, and Crystal Peak; the Tarryall Mountains; Harris Park; Wigwam Creek; and Devils Head.

The-Vug.com Quarterly #36

The most spectacular finds of smoky quartz and amazonite have come from the general area of the Lake George intrusive center, a.k.a. the Crystal Peak area, such as the Dragon’s Mouth pocket described in the 2008 Tucson issue of The-Vug Quarterly. The Tarryalls have been a prolific source for recent finds of topaz crystals. Within the batholith are also several areas of more unusual minerals, such as the Stove Mountain-Mount Rosa area noted for riebeckite, astrophyllite, zircon, and rare fluoride minerals, and the South Platte pegmatite district known for its concentrations of uranium, thorium, and rare-earth minerals.

Mount Antero and Mount White, with summits at 14,269 and 13,667 feet respectively in the Sawatch Range west of the Arkansas Valley, are famous as the source of aquamarine crystals, the state gemstone of Colorado. The aquamarine occurs in miarolitic pegmatite pockets in the mid-Tertiary age Mount Antero Granite, along with smoky quartz, microcline, albite, fluorite, and the less common beryllium minerals, phenacite and bertrandite. A rough and potentially dangerous jeep road leads to the near-summit areas where the minerals are found; there are many active claims, but new gem hunters can still scout around the periphery of the staked areas.

Left: Smoky Quartz with Feldspar Var. Amazonite 14 cm, Crystal Peak area, Colorado.

Right: Beryl Var. Aquamarine on Feldspar with Smoky Quartz 15 cm from Diane’s Pocket, Mt. Antero, Colorado

The-Vug.com Quarterly #3 7

Chaffee County, including the towns of Salida and Buena Vista and which contains the Mount Antero aquamarine deposits, includes a number of other well-known mineral localities. The Sedalia copper mine, north of Salida, is a classic locality for large (up to about 6 inches) chlorite-coated dodecahedral almandine garnets; not far away, the Calumet iron mine is best known for its epidote crystals, along with quartz, magnetite, actinolite var. uralite, and other calc-silicate minerals. Ruby Mountain, a rhyolite lava flow along the Arkansas River at Nathrop, is named (or mis-named) for its red spessartine garnets in gas cavities (lithophysae), sometimes accompanied by topaz crystals. There is a good locality for colorless quartz crystals on Missouri Hill, near Garfield, east of Monarch Pass.

Most of the once-producing mines of the Colorado Mineral Belt are long closed, and it is a challenge to even find dumps where decent specimens can be found. Silverton, Ouray, Telluride, Rico, Creede, Lake City, Summitville, Aspen, Gilman, Leadville, Alma, Breckenridge, Central City, and many more sites, some only known now as names on old maps, were once spectacular producers of ore and crystallized minerals, but are now “lean pickings” for minerals, and dealers are the main source of their gold, silver, pyrite, fluorite, quartz, barite, sphalerite, galena, and other ore and gangue minerals. Still, some accessible old adits, mine dumps, and outcrops remain, and significant gold nugget finds are still made with metal detectors. The Sweet Home mine, with its superb rhodochrosite specimens of the last few decades, is now closed and sealed.

Below: 50.28 carat rhodochrosite gemstone from Sweet Home mine. Collector’s Edge Minerals Inc.

L e f t : Calumet iron mine has been a classic collecting location for Colorado collectors


Barite has always been a prime mineral in Colorado. Crystals occur at many of the mines in the mineral belt, the golden barites from the Sherman mine outside Leadville probably being the most outstanding, but good crystals from several classic sedimentary occurrences can still be collected—around Grand Junction, south of La Junta in southeast Colorado, near Stoneham in the northeast plains, and at Hartsel in South Park.

Right Barite with Calcite 15 cm Tall. Leeson Pocket, S t o n e h a m , Weld County, ColoradoBryan and Kathryn Lees Collection


One could go on to list numerous other localities: the Crystal Mountain pegmatite district of Larimer County, known for beryl, chrysoberyl, schorl, and tantalite; more pegmatites along the Arkansas River between the Royal Gorge and Texas Creek; the Red Feather Lakes amethyst mine, Larimer County; the Amethyst Queen mine south of Grand Junction; localities for beryl and schorl in other pegmatites of the uplifted Precambrian basement rocks throughout the mountain ranges; zeolites and associated minerals in basaltic lavas in several parts of the state… there are many more, and always new things waiting for the observant and industrious mineral sleuth to locate them.

Right: “The Legend” 16 inches wide collected by Joe Dorris in the Smoky Hawk Mine in Crystal Peak area.

Left: Rhodochrosite and Fluorite from Steve’s Pocket, 14.8 cm wide.

Collector’s Edge Minerals Inc. Specimen



Joe Dorris has been amazing show goers for years with breathtaking exhibits featuring the mindblowing Amazonite and Quartz clusters mined by Joe and family. Developing claims and excavating the minerals from the ground seems to come second nature to Joe, who has put in years searching for, finding and excavating minerals to share with the public. In his 2008 hunt for minerals he has continued to work the Smoky Hawk mine and entertained several visitors including Mike Wise from the Smithsonian. The incredible un-repaired

specimen fig. 1 came out of a pocket 4’x 4’ x 2’ in size. Joe’s son Tim opened the pocket and the members of the Colorado Springs Mineralogical Society got the excitement of collecting the pocket, named “The Smithsonian Pocket”.

Joe’s operations at the Topaz Mountain Gem mine have been producing lovely facet grade topaz in clear, sherry and all hues of blue. About 7 percent of the topaz is specimen grade. fig. 2 The largest crystal found this year weighed in at 880 carats. A remarkable deep blue crystal of 80 carats was also unearthed from the alluvial deposit.

You can visit Joe Dorris this year at the Holiday Inn Central in room #103 and see some of the new finds and his fantastic assortment of professionally collected Colorado minerals. Also look for his very special display case at the main show, featuring minerals collected with his two sons from 1999-2005.

Alpine Mineral CompanyCollector’s Edge MineralsJohn Garsow Gems and MineralsGreat Basin MineralsHeliodorJBF MineralsKristalleCrystal ClassicsNexgemPala InternationalPinnacle 5 MineralsAndy Seibel MineralsSuperb Minerals IndiaThrowin StonesUncarved BlockWright’s Rock Shop

-207-130

-200

-124-121-112-133-109-302-183-103-187-225-304-233-115

ArkenstoneJohn AttardCollector’s Edge MineralsCrystal ClassicsDouglass MineralsI.C. MineralsKristalleLehigh MineralsLexcel MineralsMineral ClassicsMineral of the Month ClubMiner’s LunchboxNevada Mineral and Book Co.O.B. Rocks and MineralsSuperb Minerals IndiaDan and Diana WeinrichWilensky Fine Minerals

J 43 & 45MF 36

J 36 & 38

J 34F39J42

J 30 & 32MF 43MF 11J 49

MF 42MF 19MF 4A

E 33MF 25J 37J 35

Quality Inn New Era Gems - 106 & B400

All of these dealers have one thing in commonYou can find them online at The-Vug.com

Visit your favorite dealers after the show on The-Vug.com

http://www.peaktopeak.com/colorado/

Zealous mineral club members are often the producers of a great many informational websites for our hobby. This is very much the case when it comes to PeaktoPeak.com, a conglomeration of websites that includes three great sites focusing on mineral collecting. The most digital altruistic one, a website for the North Jeffco Gem and Mineral Club. If you have an interest in the goings on of this club, this site provides, in an easy to navigate format. The Fluorite gallery site is an interesting spectrum of fl uorite photos from around the world. However, the real gem on the peaktopeak server, the Colorado Rockhounding site. If you want to make the ultimate tribute to your states mineral collecting history, this is the site you should copy! Upon bringing up

the site one is presented with a map of Colorado, split into several sections. This is where the fun begins, as you can search for details about mineral locations in Colorado by region, location, county and by minerals found. If I wanted information on a site, let’s say North Table mountain outside of Golden, I could look by going to the location, North Table Mountain, or I could just search for a mineral found there…like Analcime. Either way, I’m taken to a page that shows me some photos of the area and a typical pocket, plus a list of minerals from the location. Some minerals have little green crystal model icons next to them, indicating that there are pictures of that mineral from that location available to view by clicking icon. While in no way as complete as it could be, this site serves as a great reference to the state of Colorado.

Paleocene angiosperm woods have been identified in just three areas in the western United States — one is the Denver Basin where Paleocene and Early Eocene woods were examined by Wheeler and Michalski. They describe other Denver Basin fossil woods as Betulaceae-like, Lauraceae, Platanoxylon, Taxodiaceae-like, Juglandaceae-like, and Parabombacaceoxlyn. During the Early Eocene Epoch (56.5 to 50 mybp), temperatures rose and rainfall increased in the western United States. Numerous lakes formed in the Rocky Mountains as rising and folding terrain created catch basins. Early Eocene flora in the central Rocky Mountains region was tropical to paratropical and included many trees now considered Asian exotics. During the Middle Eocene to Early Miocene, the Rocky Mountain uplift continued. Temperatures cooled from Middle to Late Eocene, transitioning flora from subtropical to temperate species, while extensive volcanism in the central Rocky Mountains deposited as much as 1,700 meters of ash in basins.

Numerous locations in the mountains of Colorado contain petrified wood. Florissant Fossil Beds National Monument was established in 1969 to preserve the many fossil plant remains residing within its boundaries. A volcanic flow entombed numerous trees, including giant redwood-like trees, to a height of about 5 meters (16 feet). Petrified stumps, predominately trees with affinity to Sequoia, remain in their growth positions. The largest is 4.1 meters in diameter at chest height. There are also five types of angiosperms: four are ring porous [with affinities to Koelreuteria (golden rain tree), Robinia (locust), and Zelkova (Caucasian elm)], and one is diffuse porous (new genus Chadronoxylon). One Sequoiaoxylon stump complex, called the “Redwood Trio,” is a triple trunk of one tree, the only known fossil redwood trio. This habit persists in modern redwoods when several sprouts will grow from the base of a main trunk; eventually the parent tree dies and rots, leaving the sprouts, now grown into large trees. Most of the species information comes from compression and impression fossils where we find evidence of 1,500 species of insects and 150 species of plants. The Florissant Formation has yielded more known species of fossil butterflies than any other site and the only known fossil tsetse fly. Leaves, fruits, seeds, and flowers reveal plants with affinity to conifers (bald cypress, cypress, larch, pines,

L e f t : O l d p o s t c a r d showing large Taxodioxylon stump that measured 4.3 meters (14 feet) tall and 22.5 meters (74 feet) in circumference. F l o r i s s a n t , Colorado, USA.


spruce, and yews), ferns, horsetails, and many angiosperms (including basswood, beech, birch, buckthorn, cashew, citrus trees, cocoa, currant, elder, elm, grape, hard rubber tree, hydrangea, laurel, mahogany, maple, mulberry, oak, palm, rose, spindle tree , sycamore, torchwood, tree of heaven, walnut, and willow). Relatives of many Florissant fossil plants currently live in the southern Rocky Mountains, including currant, mountain mahogany, pine, rose, spruce, and willow.

A favorite geologic formation in Colorado for collecting fossil wood is the Jurassic Morrison Formation. Although it is named after an exposure near the town of Morrison in Colorado’s Front Range, it is the Western Colorado Morrison exposures that yield some of the most rare and beautiful fossil wood on the planet. Collectors near Cortez discovered the amazingly strange and diverse fossil woods from Morrison Formation exposures in and near McElmo Canyon. Some of the unusual fossil woods from this region are cycadeoids, Osmunda, Hermanophyton, and an unidentified polyvascular fossil wood similar to Pentoxylon. Hermanophyton specimens from southwest Colorado compete in silicification and beauty

with the finest fossil wood specimens in existence. When viewed in transverse section, the image is like a lovely flower with symmetrical petals, infrequently blue with traces of red. Fortunately, early collectors of these fossils reported their finds to academic paleobotanists, resulting in an excellent research paper written by Professors William D. Tidwell and Sidney R. Ash and published in 1990 in the journal Palaeontographica. As they noted, “…the fossil has attracted considerable interest from amateur collectors in the western United States because of its unusual anatomy and apparent rarity.” Hermanophyton specimens reside in just a few locations in exposures of the Jurassic Morrison Formation in southwest Colorado and southeast Utah.

Right: Unidentified polyvascular wood. Morrison Formation, Upper Jurassic. Colorado, USA [Cortez]. Dayvault specimen, 8.5 cm.


While filming mineral locations in Colorado we found it tough locating collecting spots that were not fenced off, closed, or otherwise inaccessible. However, the trip to Leadville from central Denver was beautiful and following a field guide we found the location for these abundant crystals. After hiking around for a while we located the slope where the crystals were coming from. Along a long switchback thousands of crystals poured out from the weathered quartz monzonite allowing one to simply bend down and pick them up off the surface.

We found it very exciting to have so many large well formed crystals so readily available. In the matter of a half hour we had filled up our collecting bags and headed off to scenic Leadville for lunch. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that a mineral location like this is situated between the enormous Climax mine and the dozens of mines around the city of Leadville. Every creek in the area seems to have been worked for gold.

Leaving the Colorado mineral show in September 2007, Highway 70 was closed down and re-routed through Leadville, giving us the chance to visit this location again. While abundant, what on earth could we do with that many Orthoclase crystals? We pulled out a couple to keep for ourselves, and then we made hundreds of bags with single crystals and labels to pass out to the school children at the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show. When February came around, Brandy was out on the floor of the TGMS show letting the kids each pull a bag from her mix of mineral, after giving them a short educational talk on the minerals in the bags.

Not only did this location make for a fun collecting trip, the abundance of material made a great teaching tool. If you find yourself headed to Leadville, stop by Chalk Creek and find an Orthoclase in the beautiful backdrop of Lake County Colorado.



Above: Feldspar with Quartz and Fluorite 5.2 cm Bank Pocket, Eagle’s Ridge Claim, Lake George, ColoradoCollection of Kevin Dixon

Right: Multiple generation Goethite cluster from Lake George

There is something unmistakable in the eyes of an obsessed field collector. The passion for adventure and the search for rewards builds to a fervor and it is eveident with Adam! Spending as much time collecting as possible, often the first person in and the last person out, Adam is sure to have unearthed some new amazing minerals each time you see him.

The red and purple Fluorite crystals on Feldspar and Quartz made 2007 a very nice year for Adam. You might want to inquire with him about his 2008 Topaz/Quartz season!


Above: Adam with a large plate from the Bank Pocket, Eagle’s Ridge Claim

Left: Pyrite crystal 4 cm on edge found summer of 2008, Washington

Above Left: Goethite sphere on Quartz and Feldspar

Documents

denvermagazine48mineralmagazine.com/The-Vug-Magazine-Issue-3.pdfserver, the Colorado Rockhounding site. If you want to make the ultimate tribute to your states mineral collecting history,