Quartz

specimen number:
2292284

location:
Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River, King Co., Washington, USA

description:

A cluster of colorless gemmy quartz crystals. Minor pyrite as inclusions is present. In good condition.

The Middle Fork of the Snoqualmie River area in King County, Washington, is a notable mining district situated within the intrusive rocks of the Snoqualmie batholith. Geologically, the region is defined by a major northeast-trending zone of faulting, hydrothermal alteration, and vertical breccia pipes hosted inside 25-million-year-old granodiorite. These shattered breccia structures channeled high-temperature fluids that deposited porphyry copper-molybdenum mineralization along with well-formed crystals of quartz and pyrite. Mining history in the valley began around 1907 with the discovery of the Clipper copper deposit, followed by early development from 1908 to 1912 by the Snoqualmie Copper Company and subsequent consolidation by the United Cascade Mining Company in 1937. While large-scale industrial extraction of the low-grade base metals proved largely uneconomic, specialized specimen mining operations at claims like the Spruce 16 expanded significantly during the late 1970s and 1980s, producing distinct quartz and pyrite crystal groups for the mineral market.

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