Quartz

specimen number:
2062171

location:
Soudan Mine, St. Louis Co., Minnesota, USA

description:
Good example from this famous Minnesota locality, colorless glassy gemmy crystals of quartz to almost 2.0 cm in size across the top of matrix. This is in good condition. Specimens from this old locality rarely reached the mineral market today.

The Soudan Mine, located in Breitung Township within St. Louis County, Minnesota, is known as the state's oldest and deepest underground iron mine. Geologically, it is situated within the Vermilion Range, where it exploited the Soudan Iron Formation, a sequence of Neoarchean banded iron formation (BIF) consisting of alternating layers of silver-gray hematite and red jasper. This ore was exceptionally high-grade "hard ore," which required underground mining methods rather than the open-pit techniques common in the neighboring Mesabi Range. Historically, the mine began operations in 1882 as an open pit but transitioned to underground shafts by the 1890s. It was operated by the United States Steel Corporation for much of its life until its closure in 1962, when the high cost of underground mining made the operation no longer competitive. Following its closure, the site was donated to the state and became the Soudan Underground Mine State Park, while also serving as a unique deep-subsurface laboratory for high-energy physics research due to its extreme depth and geological stability.

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