Inesite

specimen number:
1115242

location:
Hale Creek Mine, Trinity Co., California, USA

description:

A high quality specimen of this California classic. A large open cavity is lined with attractive lustrous blocky pink crystals of inesite to 1.0 cm in size. This is much better than most that came from this locality. In good condition.

The Hale Creek mine, located near Mad River Rock in the rugged Coast Ranges of southern Trinity County, California, United States, is a historic underground operation renowned as an American classic for rare manganese minerals. Geologically, this deposit is classified as a volcanogenic-sedimentary manganese lens hosted within the complex eugeosynclinal strata of the Late Cretaceous-age Franciscan Complex. The ore body forms a nearly flat-lying, tabular mass up to 150 feet long and 12 feet thick, which is tightly enclosed within a sequence of Franciscan chert, sandstone, and laminated red shale. Hydrothermal and metamorphic processes concentrated primary manganese silicates and oxides, yielding a dense matrix of hausmannite, bementite, and rhodochrosite that is famously cut by younger veins containing highly aesthetic, pink radiating crystals of inesite, alongside barite, calcite, todorokite, and the rare barium zeolite wellsite. Historically, the deposit was discovered and opened in 1941 to help supply the critical domestic demand for strategic wartime metals during World War II. Underground extraction and trenching continued with variable intensity under various operators until the post-war decline in domestic ore prices led to the permanent cessation of all commercial mining operations by the mid-1950s.

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