Last year I wrote articles on Mindat & in Rocks and Minerals (Mar/Apr 2013) about a new fluorite find in Arizona.
The last line of my Mindat article was: "The vein has thinned as we've trenched uphill; overburden has become considerable, and both the hanging and footwalls are bounded by extremely hard, non-vuggy, silicified limestone. It would take a lot of work to further explore the vein."

In October 2013 we returned to do that work and prove whether the locality would continue to produce or be a footnote in Arizona collecting history. I'm happy to report that the vein not only continued under the overburden, but produced two of the three largest pockets yet of complex purple fluorite crystals on quartz epimorphs. One large opening was a deeper continuation of the 2012 Blueberry pocket, scattered purple crystals on sparkly quartz epimorphs after calcite. Another we named Leopard Skin, as the fluorite cube-octohedrons were visible through a 3 mm thick angular microcrystalline quartz crust, which had formed over calcite rhombs. As found, the fluorites were obscured by calcite crusts, so looked like purple leopard spots. Several smaller pockets produced ochsenaugen habit fluorite and fin-like trilling ridges of fluorite coating quartz. The latter look wonderful back-lighted.




Our October work makes it seem likely that the locality will continue to produce small amounts of excellent specimens. The working face is small, about 14 X 5 feet, and the vein dives beneath barren silicified limestone.

The locality is on private ranch land. The owner does not allow public collecting.