Cedar Mountain Stone Corp. Quarry (A. H. Smith quarry), Mitchell, Culpeper Co., Virginia, USA
TitaniteCedar Mountain Stone Corp. Quarry, Mitchell, Culpeper Co., Virginia, USA
Photo: 2008, JGW Latitude: 38°21'38"N
Longitude: 78°2'57"W
The Cedar Mountain quarry is excavated in the upper part of the concave diabase sheet known as the Rapidan diabase lopolith, located near the southern end of the Culpeper Basin. Around 1998 mining exposed areas of intense hydrothermal alteration and secondary mineral deposition. The material exposed in the late 1990’s was a particularly good example of secondary mineral deposition that is not rare in diabase intrusions and that begins at somewhat higher temperatures than the mineral assemblages typical of basalt flows in the eastern US.
During the deposition of the well known copper-prehnite-zeolite mineral assemblages in the Watchung basalts in New Jersey peak temperatures probably reached 220 deg. C. The epidote-amphibole assemblages encountered in diabase intrusions like that exposed in the Cedar Mountain quarry were estimated by Jenkins and Kearns (2007) to have crystallized at 350 deg. C.
The Cedar Mountain quarry also contains a zeolite mineral assemblage more typical of both the basalt flows and diabase intrusions of eastern North America. Although there is overlap, the zeolites tend to be later and to have crystallized at lower temperatures.
References
Jenkins, R. and Kearns,L., 2007, Mineral Assemblage of Cedar Mountain Quarry, 2007 Student Research Symposium, JMU, Harrisonburg, Va.
Mineral List
18 entries listed. 13 valid minerals.
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