Fluorapatite

specimen number:
2133380

location:
Cedar City, Iron Co., Utah, USA

description:
A loose glassy mostly gemmy yellow green terminated crystal of fluorapatite. In great condition.

Cedar City, situated in Iron County, Utah, is a historic hub for the extraction of high-grade iron ore deposits located within the nearby Iron Mountain mining district. Geologically, these world-class deposits are iron-rich skarns and replacement bodies formed during the Miocene epoch, when laccolithic intrusions of quartz monzonite injected hydrothermal fluids into the surrounding Jurassic-aged Homestake Limestone member of the Carmel Formation, systematically replacing the carbonate rock with massive hematite and magnetite. The history of mining here began shortly after the settlement of the area, with the Mormon Pioneer Mission establishing the first iron foundry in western North America at Cedar City in 1851 to exploit these outcroppings. While those early efforts faced severe technical and logistical challenges and ceased by 1858, commercial and industrial-scale open-pit mining operations were revitalized in the 1920s by corporate entities like the Columbia Iron Mining Company and Utah Construction Company to supply steel plants in Utah and California. Large-scale extraction operated continuously through the mid-to-late twentieth century until shifting global market economics led to a major slowdown and eventual closure of the primary operations in the 1980s and 1990s, though localized, intermittent production and resource exploration have continued into the twenty-first century.

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