Latitude: 27°58'N
Longitude: 103°42'W
We are going to forward this to Benny Finn and Mike New for their comments before making the final change in the locality string above.
The full correct locality string suggested by Dennis Beals is
Santo Domingo Claim
Sierra de Cruces
Hercules
Municipio de Sierra Mojada
Coahuila
Mexico
The El Alicante part is a little problematic for me. The tiny village of Las Morras is the closest but try to find it on a map. The neighboring ranch of the Ejido Alicante was helping themselves to the dump and selling it as being from El Alicante. It is somewhat closer than Hercules as the crow flies, but the access is from Hercules as are the owners of the Rancho de Cruces (5,000 hectares). The area is all bad roads and is suffering from a horrible drought. The Santo Domingo claim is on the south end of the Sierra de Cruces, a huge skarn. Hercules is a iron mining town on the NW shoulder of the skarn.
N27,55.70' W103,42.05'
I am currently working there and Hercules is on my labels. (Lake Jaco) is added to help people put it together.
The Sierra de Cruces is the correct one. No "las". Check Google Earth.
An excellent article in the Mineralogical Record, Nov.-Dec. 2003, Volume 34, No. 6. (Mexico III) also supports the proper Sierra de Cruces. The only error being in the preface that they were first noted in 1974, when 1994 is correct.
I wrote earlier how the ones that some call "cinnamon" color in a white solid wollastonite were mined in 1994 by Graham Sutton and Bob Griffis. This is approximately two kilometers WSW from the Santo Domingo Claim. In the MR article the specimen owned by Kerith Graeber and the one below it owned by Evan Jones are from there. The largest garnet crystal from there was approximately 7 cm and resides in the Freiburg Museum, the Pohl collection.
Cerro de Moka
Sierra de Cruces
Hercules
Municipio de Sierra Mojada
Coahuila
Mexico
The big pink and green grossulars come from close by, as do the large vesuvianites, approximately two kilometers NE and could be said to come from Alicante as they are on the Ejido Alicante ranch. They are still digging them. Peter Megaw labels his as, Ejido Alicante, nr. Hercules, Coahuila, Mexico. This could muddy the water a little..
Sierra de Cruces
El Alicante
Municipio de Sierra Mojada
Coahuila
Mexico
Gentlemen, fire away!
Dennis
I will cheerfully bow to your superior knowledge of the area Dennis...the ejido Alicante moniker came from my source...Peter
Just to add my 2 cents here...I know something of this area as I collected here for 3 winters beginning in 1992. This is a large regional skarn expressing itself as a large mountain range.. the Sierra de Cruces. Graham Sutton and I collected the red garnets in white matrix, the largest of which I posted a photo of, over 2 winters at the small isolated hill to the south that Dennis refers to as Cerro de Moka. It is a continuation of the same skarn. During the first winter, Casey Jones and I collected from several places, mostly in the central part of the mountain range, which is where we collected some of the brown, greenish, lavender and purplish garnets, which have representative photos on Mindat. There was no claims for these. They were collected from various widely distributed hilltops. The only really distinct localities within Sierra de Cruces, that have produced any significant materials are the Cerro de Moka locality for red (not pink or raspberry) garnets and always on white matrix, and the locality for pink/raspberry garnets with black cores and associated with vesuvianite which Graham and I found, and which Bennie later took over, and which Dennis is now working. He calls this the Santo Domingo Claim. Otherwise, because most of the garnets pictured on Mindat come from all over the Sierra de Cruces, I think the locality as it currently is should remain, and the Santo Domingo Claim and Sierra de Moka added as sublocalities. I think adding the town of Hercules to the locality is confusing as it is build around an open pit iron mine which is not really mineralogically related, is not that close to the garnet areas, and it produces its own unique, non skarn minerals. == Bob Griffis
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