Chabazite

specimen number:
2102339

location:
Upper New Street Quarry, Paterson, New Jersey, USA

description:
Blocky crystals of lustrous chabazite to 2.0 cm on edge set nicely on matrix. This is in good condition.

The Upper New Street quarry, also known historically as the Burger quarry, located in Paterson within Passaic County, New Jersey, United States, is world-famous among geologists and mineral collectors for producing an astonishing array of secondary zeolite and silicate minerals. Geologically, this site cuts directly into the Orange Mountain Basalt, a massive Early Jurassic-age volcanic extrusion that formed as the supercontinent Pangea began to rift apart. When the basaltic lava flows encountered ancient lakes or shallow water bodies in the Newark Basin, they formed distinct, rounded basalt pillows with glassy rinds and porous interstitial voids. Long after the volcanic rock cooled and solidified, low-temperature hydrothermal fluids circulating through these dense fracture systems and pillow cavities slowly precipitated spectacular crystals of prehnite, datolite, pectolite, apophyllite, analcime, chabazite, and heulandite, alongside unique pseudomorphs after vanished glauberite or anhydrite crystals. Historically, the property opened as a commercial surface quarry in 1893 to excavate and crush the durable basalt, colloquially called traprock, for use as essential roadbed ballast and industrial concrete aggregate during regional railroad and urban expansions. Under various operators, including the Burger family, mechanized quarrying ran continuously for over three decades until the physical encroachment of municipal development and the depletion of easily accessible rock faces forced the permanent cessation of all commercial extraction in 1925. Through 2026, while the historic open-cut pits have been completely leveled and absorbed by the surrounding Paterson urban landscape, the thousands of specimen suites preserved in academic archives and private collections worldwide continue to serve as a paramount reference benchmark for studying post-igneous mineralization in continental rift zones.

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