Beryl

specimen number:
2102327

location:
Stope #1, California Mine, Chaffee Co., Colorado, USA

description:

Very fine pale bluish green gemmy crystal grouping of beryl from this noted Colorado locality. In super condition all around. Collected by George Robertson.

The California mine, situated at a high altitude on the steep south slope of the divide between Baldwin Gulch and Browns Creek near Mount Baldwin, within the Mount Antero area of Chaffee County, Colorado, United States, is a legendary mineral locality world-famous for producing exceptional specimens of aquamarine, often associated with contrasting metallic molybdenite. Geologically, this rugged deposit features a prominent, nearly vertical hydrothermal quartz vein and associated pegmatite bodies hosted within the Tertiary-age Pomeroy quartz monzonite of the Princeton batholith, formed roughly 30 million years ago. During the final cooling phases of this igneous complex, high-temperature, volatile-rich fluids concentrated beryllium, molybdenum, and iron inside structural fissures, allowing sharp, hexagonal prisms of light blue to deep greenish-blue aquamarine to crystallize directly alongside quartz, feldspar, and lustrous plates of molybdenite. Historically, unlike the strictly gem-oriented surface pockets found on the high slopes of Mount Antero proper, the California mine was originally opened as a commercial underground operation for industrial molybdenum ore. Organized mining and development of the underground shafts and adits began during the early twentieth century, with primary industrial production peaking during the First World War era under operations described around 1917 to 1919, after which the site was abandoned for industrial metals and subsequently worked sporadically by specialized mineral collectors and commercial specimen miners chancing deep pockets.

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