Magnetite

specimen number:
2262284

location:
Magnet Cove, Arkansas, USA

description:
A massive specimen of magnetite from this classic area. Highly magnetic. From the mid 1960s.

The Magnet Cove complex, situated in Hot Spring County, Arkansas, was a highly specialized open-pit mining and quarrying district renowned for its extraordinary geological diversity and production of industrial minerals like barite, titanium, and abrasive novaculite. Geologically, the area is a world-famous, deeply eroded, ring-dike igneous intrusion of late Cretaceous age that forced its way through Paleozoic sedimentary rock sequences. This highly alkaline igneous complex contains a unique suite of carbonatites, ijolites, and phonolites, which generated intense contact metamorphism in the surrounding country rocks and resulted in the formation of over one hundred distinct mineral species, including exceptional crystals of magnetite, perovskite, rutile, brookite, and vesuvianite. Historically, local native populations utilized the nearby dense novaculite for toolmaking centuries before European settlers began localized quarrying and mining of magnetite iron ore in the mid-nineteenth century. Large-scale industrial open-pit extraction peaked during the twentieth century, driven heavily by the post-World War II demand for titanium ores from the central rutile deposits and extensive barite mining along the complex margins by companies like Baroid and Magnet Cove Barium Corporation (Magcobar). Commercial mining and heavy quarrying operations systematically declined as accessible high-grade reserves faced exhaustion, culminating in the permanent cessation of major industrial open-pit mineral extraction in the region by the late 1970s.

Questions about this specimen?
Send an email or call us: 314-341-1811.