Best of Connecticut

Jay - nice chalcocite and Michael, a very impressive quartz! - Brad

Here is another dravite tourmaline from the schist outcrop near the Bierman Quarry in Bethel. Apparently, sometime in the crystal's history, it was broken, offset and healed. It measures 9.7 cm x 3.5 cm., and was collected in 1981. The area is now part of Collis P. Huntington State Park.

Here is an amazonite that I collected at the Walden pegmatite in 1982.

Prehnite - Silliman Quarry in Woodbury, collected in June 1977, measures 7.0 cm x 9.0 cm. This specimen and all of the specimens which I have posted, and will post, were self-collected.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/05/2011 12:29AM by Mickey Marks.

Y'all have some nice rocks! Good stuff!

-Rowan Lytle

son: -picks up huge loose amethyst cluster- "Is this what we're looking for?"
father: "Holy #$@%!

I must say I've really been enjoying seeing all the neat specimens people are sharing here. I have a warm spot in my heart for Connecticut minerals since it was the first place this Long Island kid got to dig rocks that weren't part of a glacial moraine.

.Almandine Garnet,New England Mining Company Quarry (Roebling Mine), Upper Merryall, New Milford, Litchfield Co., Connecticut, USA. Measures 6 x 5 x 4.5 cm. This was self collected back in the early 1960's.

Actually, today I finally got to cleaning a schorl from State forest #1Quarry in East Hampton. With careful work with small chisels and dentistry tools, I uncovered my best crystal from there! it has very little damage on the termination, is about 3cm tall and 2 wide. It is rather sharp.

-Rowan Lytle

son: -picks up huge loose amethyst cluster- "Is this what we're looking for?"
father: "Holy #$@%!

So Rowan are you waiting for a drum roll to post the photo for us. grin!

No, I actually can't post one yet, but I will try as soon as possible.

-Rowan Lytle

son: -picks up huge loose amethyst cluster- "Is this what we're looking for?"
father: "Holy #$@%!

Schorl, Branchville, Redding, Fairfield Co., Connecticut. Measures 6.5 x 6 x 3.5 cm. self collected in the early 1960's.

This @ 8cm. specimen of Calcite crystal discs was collected in a pocket at Old Mine plaza, Trumbull. Ct. This was personally collected as all I have posted on this thread. Let me add, I am really enjoying seeing what you fellow Ct. collectors have posted here. Keep them coming!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/2011 11:49PM by Michael Otto.

This color-zoned beryl was collected on the dumps at the Gillette Quarry in Haddam Neck on September 23, 1979, and measures 9.0 cm x 6.3 cm.

Here are a couple of heliodors collected long ago from the Slocum prospect, which used to be a fee collecting site.
These crystals show true terminations with pyramidal faces. Most Slocum beryl specimens out there are segments of long crystals that cleaved while the surrounding quartz was still liquid or mushy and the cleavage "healed" to look like a flat, pinacoidal termination, but isn't a true one.

Beryl, Strickland Quarry ,Collins Hill, Portland, Middlesex Co., Connecticut. Got this in trade from a good friend who collected it in on a feild trip to the quarry in the mid 1950's. Measures 4.5 x 3.5 x 3 cm.

!5cm. specimen of yellow prehnite in trap rock I collected at a Newtown construction site in a delivery of rip rap from O&G quarry in Southbury in the mid 90's. Harold, those Heliodor's are awesome as are many of the Beryls that have been posted from those now lost localities. Thanks for sharing them.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2011 09:49PM by Michael Otto.

Cool, Mike. Some of my earliest collecting came from walking the railroad tracks in Milford and picking up similar but much smaller pieces in the ballast. Note that your piece is prehnite epimorphic on cavities of now dissolved analcime or perhaps the calcium analog wairakite. You can kinda make out the trapezohedral cavity inside the broken open epimorph on the right edge of the vesicle. Most of the yellow prehnite from there occurred this way. Very rarely there are prehnite pseudomorphs of the trapezohedral mineral.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/08/2011 11:03PM by Harold Moritz (2).

I am posting this photo because, to the best of my knowledge the locality is not in the Mindat database. These are garnets which weathered out of an outcrop of the Hartland II formation on Riverside Road in Newtown. My notes state "Riverside roadcut, south of Route I-84, Newtown CT - 1977". Stanley and Caldwell's "The Bedrock Geology of the Newtown Quadrangle", 1976, gives an analysis of a garnet collected from the Hartland II formation which indicate two periods of growth. The core of their garnet contains 38.68 % FeO and 12.61% MnO, while the rim shows 44.18% FeO, and only 1.14% MnO. This would indicate that their garnet falls somewhere between spessartine and almandine. I am inclined to call the garnets in this photo "almandine". The field of view is 5 cm. x 7 cm.

The coordinates of this locality, to my best recollection, are approximately 73º 16' 45" West by 41º 26' 00" North.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2011 06:36AM by Mickey Marks.

Hello Dave and Fritz and all

I used to be a connecticutite my self and I have had the luck to find stuff over the years. When I visited the Long hill spot in Haddam....

a long time ago (for me) in the 90's, some one had dug this dangerous hole at an almost vertical angle, maybe 70 degress and about 12 feet deep under a tree. I risked it and climbed to the bottom, sort of crawled and hung upside down to clean out some quartz in open veins between flat layers of schist. Thank God it did NOT cave in on me since I was all alone. I put these pieces in my bucket though>

Fred

This is one of the prehnite after analcime pseudos from O&G # 2 in southbury. Got this from Jim Garbenian who said it was after wairakite but not sure. has unaltered wairikite been confirmed from the area? regards - Brad.

I also was in the trap rock quarry in woodbury Ct in the 90's. There was some nice calcite veins when I was there. One vein had plates of scalendohedral "root beer colored" Calcite. The first photo does not give justice to the color. Second photo is closer to the real color with a magnification. the xl you see was probably 6-8 mm long

Fred Schuster