Pyromorphite

specimen number:
1115237

location:
Wheatley Mines, Chester Co., Pennsylvania, USA

description:
Attractive green crystallized cluster of pyromorphite. Very minimal micro-damage present. This is completely crystallized all around with no points of attachment. Good old time Pennsylvania classic.

The Wheatley mine (historically known as the Wheatley silver-lead mine), situated along the Pickering Creek valley in Schuylkill Township, Chester County, Pennsylvania, United States, was a highly celebrated mid-nineteenth-century underground mining operation famous for its exceptionally rich variety of secondary minerals. Geologically, this deposit is classified as a hydrothermal vein system hosted within structural fractures cutting across the Mesoproterozoic-age Baltimore Gneiss and the bordering Triassic-age Stockton Formation sedimentary rocks. Ancient low-temperature hydrothermal fluids filled these fault zones with primary base-metal sulfides, which subsequently underwent profound near-surface supergene alteration and weathering, yielding world-class, brilliant green and yellow crystal crusts of pyromorphite alongside wulfenite, cerussite, anglesite, mimetite, and galena. Historically, the vein was first discovered on the farm of William Wolley in 1851 by prominent mining engineer Charles M. Wheatley, who formally organized the Wheatley Mining Company and rapidly developed the property with a series of deep shafts, steam-powered pumping engines, and a localized smelting facility. The mine produced high-grade lead and silver ore with great intensity until escalating deep-water pumping costs, declining ore grades at depth, and the severe financial disruptions of the Panic of 1857 forced a temporary shutdown, after which the property saw only brief, intermittent leasing and exploratory work until all commercial operations permanently ceased in 1865.

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