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Improving Mindat.org"Chink Enders Mine, Oklahoma" - not a locality

27th Mar 2014 14:23 UTCKelly Nash 🌟 Expert

The "Chink Enders Mine", Ottawa County, Oklahoma at is not a valid locality and should be eliminated. Please see the discussion below which includes background from George Robinson.

"Chink Enders Mine Discussion"

Chink was a prolific mineral collector and dealer in the 1960s-'70s who collected various Tri-State localities, perhaps completely within the Picher Field in both Oklahoma and Kansas.

I suggest moving the specimens currently shown under that "locality" to the "Picher Field" main locality in Oklahoma. Even though some of the Chink Enders specimens are from Kansas, Chink was apparently based out of Picher (in Oklahoma at the Oklahoma-Kansas border) and collected many specimens from the Mid-Continent Mine, which is located in Kansas but was accessed from a shaft in Picher.

The Picher District is one of those that's problematic for Mindat because of the convention of using state names in the hierarchy above mining districts, and the Picher District, and several large mines within it, straddle the line. Many specimen labels exist with "Picher, Oklahoma" as the locality but were actually collected in Kansas.

Also, there are some mines listed in and around Cardin, Oklahoma (Ottawa County), that are for some reason do not include Picher Field in the locality string. Those mines were clearly within the Picher Field and I plan to correct this later myself, unless someone objects.

I don't put myself out as a Tri-State authority. I've been there several times, but mostly after 1980. My main resource for locating mines is the excellent USGS Professional Paper 588 ("Geology and Ore Deposits of the Picher Field, Oklahoma and Kansas", 1970).