Allanite-Ce

specimen number:
2262229

location:
Kingman Feldspar Mine, Mohave Co., Arizona, USA

description:
A mass rich with allanite. The specimen comes with an antique label as shown at the end of the video.

The Kingman Feldspar mine, situated on the eastern flank of the Cerbat Mountains within the Wallapai Mining District of Mohave County, Arizona, is a prominent historic producer of industrial minerals and a notable locality for large allanite-ce crystals. Geologically, the deposit consists of a massive, northeast-trending, sill-like granitic pegmatite body that intruded Paleoproterozoic host granites roughly 1.5 billion years ago. The pegmatite displays a well-defined internal zoning, where the wall zone features large, dark brown to black, subhedral pods of metamict allanite-ce measuring up to 50 centimeters in length, typically intergrown with biotite mica and showing an extreme geochemical enrichment in light rare-earth elements. Historically, the deposit was discovered in 1923 by G.I. Taylor and quickly transitioned to a major open-pit quarrying and mining operation under the Consolidated Feldspar Corporation. The quarry workings, consisting of several large open cuts reaching depths of 90 feet, operated continuously from 1924 through 1960, yielding more than 100,000 tons of commercial-grade crude microcline feldspar and quartz before dropping into inactivity. Through 2026, the historic open cuts and expansive mine dumps remain highly regarded by systematic mineralogists for producing exceptional, mildly radioactive reference specimens of these massive, fractured rare-earth silicate blocks.

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