Where to go in Colorado

I've been through the area numerous times but have not collected there....Leadville did not produce super attractive pieces, with the exception of their golden barites. I'm sure you will be looking at the Climax mine as you drive over the range....don't forget to admire the HUGE slurry lake on the north side of the road where they basically took a mountain and filled in a valley!

Also, don't forget to check out the Miner Museum in town. Last time I was there they had a great local topaz collection on display.

If I were doing my first trip to CO, the first book I would get would be Colorado Rockhounding by Stephen Voynick. Loads of locations and maps. It's my favorite CO book and I have over 40 from CO. They might even have it at the gift shop at the Denver Natural History Museum, which I'm sure is one of your first stops in town.

Bart,

The Book Cliffs barite locality is still open and actually covers a very large area. It has been hit hard for a long time but if you're willing to work, quality crystals can be had. There is one small area that I have collected which produced terminated golden brown crystals but I'm unwilling to disclose it here. They are slightly darker than the Elk Creek crystals. Only a few concretions have these and it would be exhausted in no time. I hope to go back to that locality some day.

The second photo is one of my favorites. It's a flattened calcite rhomb and a water clear barite crystal on a brown barite crystal. It measures 6 cm. x 4.5 cm. x 4 cm. The crystal in the first photo is 4 cm. long.

Two more Book Cliffs barite photos. The first is 5.8 cm. x 4.2 cm. x 2.4 cm. The second picture is a double terminated crystal that is 3.9 cm. long.

Nice looking barites there Mark and Linda! I've never seen the brown colored crystals before....amazing! I've always wanted to go the cliffs but the heat and the isolation have kept me from there. It's on my list for sure. Last time we were near there at the Douglas Pass fossil site. I've heard from some CO friends that the government shut that place down. Any news on that to pass along?

I heard a rumor about the closing of Douglas Pass. I've never collected there because I am less interested in fossils than minerals. If you want to collect Colorado, I'd suggest doing it sooner rather than later. I was informed of closings to collecting in Summit County and Leadville at the Durango gem show this past weekend. The rather startling change in Colorado's political orientation is a product of immigration from a couple of other states and is resulting in increased boldness of those who would close the state to everything but hiking, skiing and bicycling.

Yeah, last year I had a good conversation with Jack Morris in Creede about how his new "neighbors" (real estate investors from Denver) have spent thousands of dollars in lawyer fees and court cases to try and block him from using a public road to access his own land and mine (that he had before they got theirs!).

I wish I could say your story only related to CO, but that's happening everywhere and at a fast pace. Up here in QC we just lost access to about 90% of the operating quarries last year.

Mining built Colorado. Now, the very concept is despised, especially by the new arrivals who divorced the place they've come from yet carry the baggage of the attitudes created by the place that formed them. I find it very confusing. Very illogical.

Mining may have built Colorado, but to these newcomers that is part of an ugly past, when the land was raped, the forests chopped, and the buffalo shot. It's a "green" world now. We don't do that here. It brings down property values. Mineral collecting is destructive and a dangerous activity, performed by trespassers and thieves. Oh, and let's not forget about the liability! Every year people die while hiking, biking, and skiing here in Colorado. You see it all the time on the news. I've never heard a single report of someone dying while mineral collecting. Could be a numbers thing though. Funny thing is, these same people who are condemning mining don't realize that it's necessary in order to build their mountain mansions.

David, Mark, Rudy,

Have you ever been to the mill building overlooking the crystal river near Marble Colorado? I took a wrong turn last month when I tried to find it.

I was in that area hoping to see the Yule Marble quarry, but some new private property owners have closed the path which had been used by the public for years to view the quarry and marble dump. We can probably thank trial lawyers for that closure.

-Dean Allum

Hi Dean,

No, I haven't made it to that most photogenic site yet. I did make it to the quarry though...maybe 5 years ago on the trail that starts at a cabin and follows Crystal Creek up a bit, then dips into the woods for a while, and finally spills you out into the marble block rejects slope. Walking on the the marked trail which turned into a quarry road for a bit then allowed one to get that classic view of the Yule Marble Mine through the old portal. The trail was small, but well marked 5 years ago. That would be another great site lost if you are correct. The town of Marble and Redstone were two of my favorite small towns in CO. I highly recommend staying in the hotel on the river in Redstone and walking the city during the evenings.

Hey Dean,

I hiked up to the Yule Quarry back in the early 90's when you could. It's all private property up there now. I have almost given up mineral collecting in the Front Range area because of the same reason. When I first got to Colorado 31 years ago, you could go just about anywhere and not deal with PP issues. It seems now every backroad leads to some mountain mansion. It's a frustrating situation for us mineral collectors, especially when you drive a long way to a locality, only to find that dreaded sign.

Colorado Goldfields has been trying to resurrect mining in the Silverton area for years. The engineer who is working for them on a mill permit happens to be my engineer as well. According to him, it's a nightmare dealing with the regulators. It's amazing, people hate corporations and yet the cost of regulatory compliance is so huge that only a large, well funded corporation can even have a chance to "earn" state approval.

Tourism is on the decline in that community and yet a large number of residents resist any revival of mining. Tourism based jobs are minimum wage while the extraction industry pays several times that amount. I read that the average tourist drives some 800 miles each way to visit here. That's environmentally friendly? A remote area like SW Colorado is inevitably going to see declines in the numbers of tourists as the war on American mobility (fossil fuels) grows. Resurrection of mining would be a vastly superior alternative.

I know I'm off topic but just think of the Colorado specimens that would come onto the market if such a revival happened, of course assuming attention was paid to saving said specimens. An old miner at the Idorado who isn't prone to embellishment told me of lustrous, hoppered quartz crystals the diameter of his chest and several feet long in a vug that was never touched.

Hi Mark and Linda,

I'd love it if you could put your name at the ends of your posts so that I knew how to address you. I always am assuming it is Mark that I am talking to, but that could get me in trouble fast!

Anyways, Silverton is my second favorite town in CO after Creede. It is such a great collecting location. My trip there last year ended up with an exploration leg (for the amethyst) that left me barreling away full bore with my little rental car trying to get more traction on a ascent up near the snow patch area. We ended up parking the car at the switchback and doing some sulphide picking instead in some old tailings.

For anyone heading out to CO; The old Mayflower Mill museum east of Silverton is one of the finest complete mill museums that I've ever seen. It shut down after proccessing the last of the Sunnyside material in the 80's(?) and the county now has ownership and operates it as a very nice museum of mill machinery (no minerals to see).

It's always me, Mark. Linda doesn't post things on the internet.

Mark

Rudy Bolona Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hey Dean,
>
> I hiked up to the Yule Quarry back in the early
> 90's when you could. It's all private property up
> there now. I have almost given up mineral
> collecting in the Front Range area because of the
> same reason. When I first got to Colorado 31 years
> ago, you could go just about anywhere and not deal
> with PP issues. It seems now every backroad leads
> to some mountain mansion. It's a frustrating
> situation for us mineral collectors, especially
> when you drive a long way to a locality, only to
> find that dreaded sign.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Too bad what you say. During my HS days in Lakewood in the 60's I'd spend hours on Table Top Mt collecting zeolites, and all night in a mine or two in Idaho Springs looking for stuff. Did Lagarita Pass and Red Feather Lakes for quartz, Stoneham for blue baryte and other back roads near Fairplay and Leadville as well as all those good places for smoky quartz and amazonite in Teller Co. Those were the days and it is really a bummer to think that if I come back to Colorado to look for some stuff, it is now all housing developments and private roads leading to some of my "old spots" Do we really call this progress?