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LocalitiesUpper Providence Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, USA

14th Aug 2022 23:42 UTCBen Grguric Expert

In the recent supplement to Mineralogical Record on self-collected specimens, collector Bryon Brookmyer shows an excellent 12 cm amethyst he collected from the site of a Maalox Plant in Collegeville, Penn in 1991. So good that it's now in the Carnegie Museum.

Does anyone know of a write-up of this occurrence? It was apparently covered up with concrete within a week of exposure.

15th Aug 2022 01:31 UTCKevin Conroy Manager

https://rasloto.com/FM/NL/v19n1.pdf

15th Aug 2022 02:09 UTCKevin Conroy Manager

I was going to create a locality page for this find, but I'm unsure about what to call it. From the link above I think that it's under this facility:

https://start.cortera.com/company/research/k3r9lum3l/rhone-poulenc-rorer/

15th Aug 2022 05:14 UTCBen Grguric Expert

Thanks Kevin, This is good information.

15th Aug 2022 06:20 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager

Kevin

I would suggest:

Amethyst occurrence, Collegeville, Montgomery Township, Pennsylvania.

Treat the locality as historic and built over.

I suggest that the information in the article mentioned be added to the description and reference section.

Also note that it is Poulenc NOT Poulene as in the article mentioned.

As the locality was at the construction site of the Rhône-Poulenc Rorer facility perhaps best to centre the locality here: 40.16260358615652, -75.46510951872439

The company buildings appear to have been sold on around 1999.

Not sure whether you use Collegeville as the town or Yerkes - I guess depends on boundaries etc.

15th Aug 2022 14:09 UTCKelly Nash 🌟 Expert

Ron Sloto's book "The Mines and Minerals of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania". (2019) calls it the "Collegeville Amethyst Locality".

15th Aug 2022 13:56 UTCKevin Conroy Manager

I'm not sure if this find is referring to this locality (that may need to be split into 3 localities):

https://www.mindat.org/loc-69387.html

15th Aug 2022 15:18 UTCMark Heintzelman 🌟 Expert

The locality string for this short lived amethyst occurrence is currently correct "as is". It is the locality naming all the local experts know it as, and the locality all the materials from the find are labeled (i.e. "Collegeville"). Any additional or more specific information on this locality should be added to the locality description, not the locality string, as it might only help to add confusion.

This facility was built on a former, still surviving 19th C. farm near the interchange of US 422 and Route 29, and although the facility is massive, the property has a fairly large and undisturbed privacy setback, and campus which has also preserved the original Farmhouse, hedgerow, stone walls, several original stone outbuildings and maintained many former fields as natural meadow land as well as preserving the mature growth woodlands along Perkiomen Creek, as well as having purchased and additional 92 acres adjacent to the creek to remain permanent open space under their ownership, all of which may now someday also be developed and perhaps provide additional opportunities for collecting.

However, no one knows this locality as the "Rhône-Poulenc Rorer facility Construction site", nor does the property currently belong to the company (now primarily owned by Pfizer Pharmaceuticals with Dow Chemical, Keller Williams and TA of Limerick also occupying offices and facilities). This additional information certainly could be, but should ONLY be, added to the locality description, not the locality string.

15th Aug 2022 15:38 UTCKevin Conroy Manager

Thanks Mark! Do you think that the two other quarries mentioned in the locality should be split off?

15th Aug 2022 18:50 UTCMark Heintzelman 🌟 Expert

I am not familiar with the Mineralogical Record article (I stopped subscribing many years ago when it became, in large part, a vanity project of the hi-end collectors).

If these noted unnamed quarries are called out in Ron's Volume on Montgomery Co., I would handle them as separate localities the same way he does in his volumes, but when this locality was first created, there was little published reference for it, and these observations were simply included according to the Collegeville references provided in Gordons "Mineralogy of Pennsylvania", primarily to make note of the regional geology.

15th Aug 2022 19:53 UTCKevin Conroy Manager

OK, sounds good. I'll make two new locality pages for the quarries mentioned on the amethyst locality page: https://www.mindat.org/loc-69387.html

The quarries are clearly not in the same area. Also, the minerals mentioned in the reference above (Mineralogy of Pennsylvania - 1922; Samuel S. Gordon pg. 217., which pre-dates the amethyst find by decades) weren't mentioned in the Friends of Mineralogy newsletter, so they need to be moved to the respective quarry pages.

15th Aug 2022 20:35 UTCKevin Conroy Manager

Done. Upper Providence Township, PA localites:

https://www.mindat.org/loc-240801.html

15th Aug 2022 21:38 UTCBen Grguric Expert

Good work. Judging by the photo in the Min Rec supplement it is too important an American mineral locality to warrant just a single descriptive line.

25th Aug 2022 20:06 UTCKevin Conroy Manager

Amethyst

Collegeville Amethyst Locality, Collegeville, Upper Providence Township, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, USA

Debra Wilson at the Carnegie Museum has kindly posted a photo of a superb crystal from the locality.

25th Aug 2022 21:31 UTCHerwig Pelckmans

That IS a beauty indeed!!

Thank you for posting, Debra!

Cheers, Herwig

26th Aug 2022 03:27 UTCBen Grguric Expert

I've updated the locality description based on the description in the 1991 Min Record article.

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