Quartz

specimen number:
2292372

location:
Summit King Mine, Churchill Co., Nevada, USA

description:
The top of this matrix is covered by colorless quartz crystals, some of them exhibiting scepter crystals in measuring to 2.0 cm in size. In good condition.

The Summit King Mine, situated in the Sand Springs mining district of Churchill County, Nevada, is located along an east-west trending shear zone that cuts through Mesozoic metamorphic rocks and Tertiary volcanic formations. Originally discovered as the Dan Tucker claim in 1905, the property was mined sporadically for gold and silver, seeing its most significant commercial operations between 1940 and 1951 under the Summit King Mines company. Geologically, the deposit consists of epithermal veins of vuggy, fine-grained quartz, calcite, and fault breccia hosted within rhyolite and andesite dikes. While mined primarily for precious metals, the vugs and open cavities within these veins also allowed for the crystallization of secondary quartz formations. Among these are scepter quartz crystals, which formed when a later generation of silica-bearing hydrothermal fluids deposited a secondary quartz crystal cap over an existing, older quartz stem. The mine, particularly around the Getchell shaft, became known to mineral collectors for producing these distinct skeletal and sceptered quartz specimens.

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