Dravite-Uvite

specimen number:
2102365

location:
Powers Farm, St. Lawrence Co., New York, USA

description:
Lustrous black crystals measuring to 1.3 cm in size across the top of matrix. In good condition.

The Powers Farm locality, situated near Pierrepont in St. Lawrence County, New York, is a world-famous mineral collecting site consisting of shallow, surface-level trenching and pit-quarrying operations. Geologically, the site is positioned within the metasedimentary rocks of the Grenville Province, which underwent intense regional metamorphism during the Proterozoic eon. The unique mineralized zones occur within a highly altered, coarse-grained marble and quartz-tourmaline rock, where late-stage hydrothermal fluids rich in boron, fluorine, and magnesium interacted with calcium-rich metasediments to form complex metamorphic mineral assemblages. Historically, the locality has been intermittently dug by mineralogists, museum curators, and hobbyists since the late nineteenth century, with formalized access and organized field collecting reaching its peak activity between the 1960s and the early 2000s under cooperative agreements with the property owners. Through 2026, while never developed into a commercial industrial mine, the site remains an internationally celebrated geological reference point and the premier North American locality for spectacular, lustrous, dark brown to black tourmaline crystals. These specimens, long referred to simply as dravite, have been mineralogically reclassified as a complex series spanning dravite and uvite, often occurring as perfectly formed, doubly terminated crystals embedded in a contrasting matrix of white quartz and sparkling green tremolite.

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