Elbaite with Quartz

specimen number:
2312004

location:
Himalaya Mine, San Diego Co., California

description:
Beautiful combination piece from this famous locality with pink lustrous translucent crystals of elbaite measuring to 4.0 cm in size, these with green cores. Often referred to as watermelon tourmaline, this is in good condition.

The Himalaya Mine, located in the Mesa Grande district of San Diego County, California, is situated within the Peninsular Ranges Batholith, a granitic complex formed during the Late Cretaceous period approximately 95 to 100 million years ago. The deposit consists of a complex pegmatite dike that crystallized from volatile-rich residual melts, creating open miarolitic cavities where lithium, boron, and aluminum-bearing minerals accumulated. Commercial operations began around 1898, and the mine quickly became a major global producer of elbaite tourmaline during the early twentieth century, driven largely by export demand from the imperial court of China. Following the collapse of the Qing dynasty and subsequent market shifts, commercial output declined, though the underground workings and dumps have continued to yield tourmaline, quartz, and lepidolite through intermittent modern mining and public-access dig sites.

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