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| Mineral
and Fossil Collecting in the Mid-Atlantic
Region |
| In high
school and college, I was an avid mineral
and fossil collector. An hour drive west
of New York City in the northwest corner
of New Jersey is one of the most renowned
mining districts in the world, Franklin-Sterling
Hill, where zinc ore was primarily mined.
More mineral species (358)
have been documented from this locality
than anywhere else on earth, of which, 34
are found no where else in the world. Many
of these minerals glow brilliantly under
ultraviolet light. You can visit the underground
Sterling Hill mine and mining museum, Thomas
S. Warren Museum of Fluorescence, and
the nearby Franklin
Mineral Museum. Many years ago, spectacular
examples of zeolite minerals were found
in the traprock (basalt) quarries of northern
New Jersey (Paterson, West Paterson, Great
Notch, Summit, Bound Brook). The Franklin-Sterling
Hill and New Jersey traprock minerals are
on display at the American
Museum of Natural History, Harvard
Mineralogical Museum, Paterson
Museum, Rutgers
Geology Museum, and Smithsonian
National Museum of Natural History.
The best mineral collecting in my lifetime
was at Franklin and Paterson in the mid-1980's
where excavations at building sites unearthed
a fabulous array of rare museum-quality
specimens. Every weekend, the late John
Kadlecik, Bill Sherpinsky, and I would drive
to Paterson and then to Franklin. In the
vicinity of Amelia, Virginia are world famous
granitic pegmatites (Morefield,
Rutherford,
and 70 other mines and prospects) that have
yielded gem-quality green amazonite (variety
of microcline feldspar) and over 50 rare
and exotic pegmatite minerals. Gold
was first discovered near Great Falls, Maryland
during the Civil War. The first mine began
operating in 1867 and small, sporadic operations
continued for the next 73 years on both
sides of the Potomac. The Maryland
Gold Mine can be seen at Falls Road
and MacArthur Boulevard in C&O Canal
National Historical Park. A swath of gold
mines extends for 140 miles across Virginia's
gold-pyrite
belt. At Monroe
Park, Goldvein, VA, you can visit a
gold mining camp museum. You do not have
to go to the Yukon or Alaska to find gold.
Pan for gold in streams like Contrary
Creek, Mineral, VA, Rock Run, Potomac, MD, and Swinks
Mill (Scotts Run), Great Falls, VA,
with the permission of the landowner. The
gold is associated with black sand (iron-rich
'heavy' minerals mostly magnetite and hematite),
so if you are not finding black sand, look
elsewhere. The chances of finding gold increase
if you look for lode (in place) rather than
placer (eroded, stream-worn) gold by digging
down into the stream sediment to the saprolite
(weathered bedrock), which is broken up
and put in the gold pan. |
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| Over
600 species of Miocene fossils (10-20 million
years old) have been identified from Calvert
Cliffs from north of Chesapeake Beach
to Drumm Point. The area is world-famous
for fossil whales and porpoises. Shark teeth
ranging in size from barely visible to Miocene
monsters 5 inches long (Megalodon)
are prized finds along with whale vertebrae.
The area is also noted for densely packed
beds of fossil mollusk shells. The Calvert
Marine Museum, Maryland
Geological Society, and Virginia
Museum of Natural History organize fossil
collecting field trips. It is illegal to
dig into the cliffs, but lots of fossils
occur as beach wash or weather out of the
cliffs. More information on mineral and
fossil collecting in the mid-Atlantic region
can be found at Big
Brook Cyber Museum, Bob's Rock Shop, Chesapeake
and Delaware Canal Fossils, Chris's
Mineral Collecting Page, Fluorescent
Minerals, FossilGuy,
Franklin and Sterling Hill Minerals,
Jones
Geological Services, Mindat.org, Mineral
Clubs in the Greater Baltimore - Washington,
DC Area, Mineral
Collecting in New England and Mid-Atlantic, NJ Fossilman,
NJ
Fossils, Penn
Minerals, Plant
Fossils of West Virginia, Traprock
Minerals of New Jersey, and Trotter Dump Digg. |
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