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Fizelyite recently discovered at the Blue Light Mine, Silverado Canyon, Orange C

Last Updated: 31st May 2010

By Robert Housley

It appears that fizelyite has not been previously documented from California, so it seems necessary to document the recent find we made at the old Blue Light Mine in Silverado Canyon, Northern Santa Ana Mountains, Orange County, California.

I love to explore new areas looking for previously unknown micro minerals, especially if the location is close to home. Therefore when Kyle Buecke provided me with detailed directions for finding the Blue Light Mine in August of 2009 it was not long before I went down for a look. On this first trip I got to what I now believe was the level 3 dump late in the afternoon. I infer this location description from a detailed account of the mine workings I subsequently found in a 1988 California State University, LA masters thesis by Steven Draper.

At first sight the rocks on this dump did not look very interesting. Nonetheless I took a few pieces from two initially big rocks home. One of the initial rocks had a lot of sphalerite and a little galena in a dolomite gangue. The other rock was largely dolomite and calcite and contained millimeter sized vugs with tiny pyrite crystals. On returning home I sent half the material from each rock to Kyle.

I did not find anything of note on the pieces I kept, so it was with great surprise that I heard from Kyle a few days later that he had found tiny metallic needles in the piece of sulfides I had sent him. He sent the small fragment with the needles back to me and I examined it in the SEM. From the morphology and the EDS analysis I determined that the needles were fizelyite, and also found tiny grains which appeared to be tetrahedrite on the sample. However this SEM sample was all we had of the material, so it did not seem appropriate to make any report unless we could find more.

Finally the opportunity to take a second look came in late April of 2010. Al Wilkins and I went down there and went directly to the level 3 dump. We spent several hours exploring the dump and its immediate vicinity. We neither one saw any interesting micro minerals with the loop. Nonetheless we both brought heavy loads of samples home for closer examination.

Upon this close examination I found interesting minerals in two of the many rocks I had carried down. One had tiny regions of pyrargyrite sparingly distributed in the sphalerite. The other had tiny metallic wires in little vugs in dolomite. These latter did prove to be the long sought fizelyite and I was able to get about 25 micro specimens out of the rock. Hence it now seems safe to report the occurrence. Two examples are shown below.

06815670014960976833356.jpg
Fizelyite hairs in dolomite vug
07838750014960976831838.jpg
Fizelyite hairs in dolomite vug
06815670014960976833356.jpg
Fizelyite hairs in dolomite vug
07838750014960976831838.jpg
Fizelyite hairs in dolomite vug
06815670014960976833356.jpg
Fizelyite hairs in dolomite vug
07838750014960976831838.jpg
Fizelyite hairs in dolomite vug

Another silver mineral also occurred in this second rock, but never in the vugs. From its composition I think it is diaphorite, and I also got five micros of it.

Judging from the size of the dump and the near impossibility of recognizing the fizelyite bearing rock in the field it seems safe expect that there is much more fizelyite in this dump. However it is about a 1.7 mile hike to the dump by the shortest route, and rock must be carried out and closely examined to find the fizelyite. Therefore it is anybody’s guess how much more will be recovered.
Since interesting Ag, Sb minerals are now known to occur here it seem appropriate to include a brief outline of the history of the area. Silver was apparently first discovered in the Silverado Canyon area in 1877 by Santa Ana business men Hank Smith and William Curry, who were hunting deer in the area. Word of this discovery soon leaked out and there was a rush of miners to the area with over 500 claims being filed within a short time. What was to become the Blue Light Mine was initially found by J. D. Dunlap, a U. S. Marshall chasing a Mexican outlaw. When he spotted an outcrop of rich silver ore he apparently gave up the chase and filed on what was initially known as the Dunlap Mine. This soon became the most productive mine in the region.

By 1883 the initial silver boom was over, but several of the early mines including the Dunlap, consolidated as the Blue Light Group, and were operated intermittently until about 1946. Ore was moved by aerial tramways to a flotation mill on the creek at the bottom of the hill. The old workings partly caved in and partly flooded, remained a magnet for young explorers until recently. Two young adults drowned in the mine in 2002. In 2008 the U. S. Forrest Service had the mine area cleaned up a Superfund site. All remaining mine entrances were sealed with steel bars. The historical mill, aerial tramways, and other structures, along with the mill dump were all removed. Fortunately for mineralogists the other dumps remain in place.








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Discuss this Article

30th May 2010 16:57 UTCRob Woodside 🌟 Manager

Thanks so much Robert. That is a nice find and a good report. However your Fizelyite looks more like Owyheeite. Both have close and variable formulae. How did you nail fizelyite? An EDS would not do it alone

31st May 2010 18:49 UTCRobert Housley Expert

Rob, thank you for your comment. I took the deep striations and lack of well defined terminations to be diagnostic, but maybe that is too optimistic on my part. I will try to get it x-rayed soon and will post the result.
 
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