Calcite

specimen number:
2292127

location:
Kendall Quarry, Watcom Co., Washington, USA

description:
Colorless translucent rhombohedral crystals of calcite to 1.2 cm in size covering the top of matrix. In good condition.

The Kendall quarry, located on the eastern slope of Red Mountain near the town of Kendall in Whatcom County, Washington, is a major industrial limestone extraction site noted for its producing sedimentary and metamorphic mineral specimens. Geologically, the quarry exposes thick, massive beds of high-calcium limestone belonging to the Lower Pennsylvanian portion of the Chilliwack Group. This marine sedimentary sequence underwent regional low-grade metamorphism and folding, creating dense crystalline limestone beds crosscut by localized hydrothermal calcite veins and dark argillite interbeds. Open cavities within the fractured stone contain distinct rhombohedral and scalenohedral calcite crystals, occasionally associated with secondary iron sulfides. Commercial quarrying operations began around 1926 when the Olympic Portland Cement Company developed the site to supply raw limestone via rail to its processing plant in Bellingham. The facility underwent several ownership changes during the mid-to-late twentieth century, including management by the Permanente Cement Company and Columbia Cement Company, and it has maintained continuous industrial-scale open-pit extraction for cement and aggregate production well into the twenty-first century.

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