Cuprite

specimen number:
1052599

location:
Bisbee, Cochise Co., Arizona, USA

description:

Red acicular crystallized cuprite, this is the variety known as chalcotrichite, throughout matrix. In good condition, a choice antique example for the species and locality. The specimen comes with an antique label as shown at the end of the video. The specimen was originally acquired in 1908.

The Bisbee mineral district, situated within the Mule Mountains of Cochise County, Arizona, United States, is a legendary mining locality world-famous for producing spectacular copper specimens, including exceptional capillary arrays of the cuprite variety known as chalcotrichite, which features delicate, needle-like, or plush mats of interconnected bright red crystals. Geologically, this immense deposit is a complex porphyry copper system centered around the Jurassic-age Sacramento Stock, an igneous intrusion that triggered extensive contact metamorphism and skarn formation within surrounding Paleozoic limestone beds. Over millions of years, intense supergene weathering and descending groundwater oxidised the primary sulfide ore bodies near the surface, leaching copper ions and reprecipitating them within open dissolution cavities and fractures to form rich zones of secondary minerals, allowing the fragile, hair-like chalcotrichite needles to grow undisturbed inside low-pressure clay-lined pockets alongside malachite, azurite, and native copper. Historically, organized large-scale underground shaft and open-pit mining at Bisbee began in 1880 following the discovery of the rich Copper Queen vein, escalating into a massive industrial powerhouse managed by the Copper Queen Consolidated Mining Company and later the Phelps Dodge Corporation. Prolific underground workings like the Czar, Briggs, and Cole shafts, along with the massive Lavender Pit, operated continuously for nearly a century until declining ore grades and high operational costs forced the permanent cessation of all commercial mining operations in 1975.

The mineral dealership of C. Riemer, based in Magdeburg, Germany, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, operated as a notable regional distributor of specialized geological and mineralogical specimens tailored for educational institutions, academic researchers, and advanced private collectors. Functioning alongside contemporaneous central German enterprises, Riemer specialized in sourcing, documenting, and preparing mineral suites that prominently featured classic structural occurrences from regional German volcanic zones, the Harz Mountains, and the famous salt and potash deposits of the Saxony-Anhalt region, such as Stassfurt and Leopoldshall. His commercial business catalogs and meticulously curated specimen assemblies targeted the expanding demands of technical universities and scientific associations during a highly active period of European mineralogical classification and economic geology. The dealership provided meticulously labeled reference pieces, frequently mounted or resting on distinct, hand-written or stamped white paper merchant tags that explicitly preserved the precise mineral chemistry, crystallization style, and localized mine provenance.

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