Old Mine Park (Lane’s Mine of Trumbull; Hubbard Mine; Long Hill Mine; Old Tungsten Mine), Trumbull, Fairfield Co., Connecticut, USA
Latitude: 41°14'30"N
Longitude: 73°12'0"W
This locality (a town park), like the neighboring Old Mine Plaza, is unique in Connecticut for its varied mineralogy and the area was prospected since the early 19th century. Although officially referred to as Tungsten Mine Park, the park encompasses a number of unrelated deposits with separate prospecting and mining history and mineralogy.
It is underlain by gently dipping, interlayered amphibolite and marble. The amphibolite is host to a stratiform deposit of
scheelite, most of it pseudomorphed to
ferberite, with sulfides and was the subject of short-lived mining efforts around 1900. According to Sullivan (1985), this was after Ephraim Lane and later his son Charles, prospected it in the early to mid-1800s, and after Thomas Hubbard had searched in vain for copper, lead and silver deposits, not tungsten, in the late 1880s. Sullivan also states that it should be the first tungsten deposit identified in North America (it was the first mined) and the type locality for
tungstite, rather than the typically referenced Ephraim Lane's Mine in Monroe. Hobbs (1901) states that "The confusion which has arisen has been due largely to the propinquity of the two localities and to the fact that both mines were owned by men bearing the same surname." Very little if any tungsten mineralization occurs at Lane's Mine in Monroe.
Numerous cross-cutting veins contain a muscovite-topaz-fluorite var.
chlorophane-quartz assemblage, found also in the surrounding area. According to Sullivan (1985), this site is also the first known North American
topaz locality. Most of the veins are predominantly quartz and one, called the Champion Lode, was mined for wood and paper filling (Hobbs 1901, Trumbull Historical Society 1966).
Other minerals are found in the small marble quarries (amphiboles, pyroxenes, titanite, grossular, chlorite, phlogopite) and cross-cutting pegmatites (albite, microclne, quartz, muscovite, beryl). Veins and pods of plagioclase and
scapolite are also present.
Sullivan reports other confusion through the years, such as topaz being called
beryl (though it is present in the pegmatites), Hoadley's (1918) unconfirmed report of
cronstedtite,
zoisite (epidote, though the 'epidote' associated with the scheelite/ferberite is
clinozoisite), and
diaspore "mistakenly identified as
euclase".
Mineral List
66 entries listed. 51 valid minerals. 1 erroneous literature entry.
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References
- Shepard, Charles U. (1837). A Report on the Geological Survey of Connecticut.
- Shepard, Charles U. (1842). On
Washingtonite (a New Mineral), the Discovery of
Euclase in Connecticut, and Additional Notices of the Supposed
Phenakite of Goshen [MA], and Calstron-baryte of Schoharie, N. Y. (Am Journ. of Sci. 43:364).
- Hobbs, W. H. (1901). The old tungsten mine in Trumbull, Conn. (USGS Annual Report 22:7-22).
- Hoadley, Charles W. (1918). An American Occurrence of
Cronstedtite (American Mineralogist 3:6).
- Shannon, Earl V. (1921). The Old Tungsten Mine in Trumbull, Connecticut (American Mineralogist 6:126-128).
- Blatz, Paul T. (1938). The Old Tungsten Mine in Trumbull, Connecticut (Rocks & Minerals 13(8):236-237).
- Trumbull Historical Society. (1966): History and Minerals of Old Mine Park.
- Sullivan, Earle C. (1985): History and Minerals of Old Mine Park. Second Edition, Revised and Expanded. Trumbull Historical Society, Inc.
- Januzzi, Ronald. (1976): Mineral Localities of CT and Southeastern NY State.
- Schooner, Richard. (1961) THE MINERALOGY OF CONNECTICUT.
- Ryerson, Kathleen. (1972) ROCK HOUND'S GUIDE TO CONNECTICUT.
- Webster, Bud. (1978) MINERAL COLLECTOR’S FIELD GUIDE CONNECTICUT.
- Webster, Bud and Bill Shelton. (1979) MINERAL COLLECTOR’S FIELD GUIDE THE NORTHEAST.
- Weber, Marcelle H. and Earle C. Sullivan. (November/December 1995) CONNECTICUT MINERAL LOCALITY INDEX. Rocks & Minerals (Connecticut Issue), Volume 70, No. 6.
- Schairer, John. (1931): Minerals of Connecticut. Connecticut Geological and Natural History Survey Bulletin 51.
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