Fluorapatite

specimen number:
1052805

location:
Auburn, Androscoggin Co., Maine, USA

description:
Beautiful purple lustrous and gemmy crystals of fluorapatite measuring to 0.6 cm in size on matrix. Great color, damage is present as seen. The specimen comes with an antique label as shown at the end of the video. This label gives an acquisition date in October, 1908.

The City of Auburn, situated within Androscoggin County, Maine, hosts several historically important pegmatite quarries, most notably the Mount Apatite district. Geologically, these deposits are part of the late Paleozoic New England pegmatite province, featuring complex, zoned granitic pegmatites that intruded into older metamorphic host rocks like the Cushing Formation. These pegmatites formed from highly fractionated, volatile-rich residual magmas, creating distinct mineral pockets filled with quartz, feldspars, micas, and a diverse suite of accessory minerals including tourmaline, beryl, and apatite group species. Organized quarrying for industrial feldspar and commercial gemstone extraction began at Mount Apatite in the late 1860s, with various operations expanding through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries under prominent mining figures like Maine tourmaline pioneer Loren Merrill. Production of commercial-grade industrial minerals and gem-quality tourmaline peaked between the 1880s and the 1920s, after which operations gradually declined to intermittent, small-scale mineral specimen collecting by the mid-twentieth century.

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