Calcite

specimen number:
9273046

location:
Santa Eulalia, Chihuahua, Mexico

description:
Beautiful matrix less crystallized grouping of translucent colorless lustrous calcite crystals. This is in really good condition.

The Santa Eulalia mining district, located in central Chihuahua, Mexico, is the largest of a sequence of prolific silver-lead-zinc carbonate replacement deposits running along the intersection of the Mexican Thrust Belt and the Sierra Madre Occidental. Geologically, the district is situated on a broad, north-northwest-trending anticline of Cretaceous sedimentary limestone and evaporite strata, where mineralizing hydrothermal fluids formed massive sulfide mantos and vertical chimneys alongside extensive calcic-iron skarn bodies. While Spanish explorers initially noticed mineralization in 1591, large-scale commercial exploitation officially commenced with the major discovery of high-grade silver-lead oxide ores in 1703. This initial period of intense colonial surface and shallow underground extraction lasted until roughly 1880, producing the wealth that built the nearby city of Chihuahua, before transitioning into a modern, industrial era dominated by international corporations from 1881 to 1924. Deep mining operations shifted focus after 1925 toward the unoxidized massive sulfide and skarn deposits beneath the water table, sustaining nearly continuous production through the twentieth century until major deep-shaft operations began winding down into intermittent, smaller-scale extractions in the 1990s and 2000s.

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