Quartz with Actinolite

specimen number:
2063371

location:
Calumet Mine, Chaffee Co., Colorado, USA

description:

A loose single glassy gem colorless crystal of quartz with green inclusions of actinolite. Sharp and in great condition.

The Calumet Mine, located in the Turret District of Chaffee County, Colorado, is a famous historic iron skarn deposit formed during the Laramide Orogeny by contact metamorphism between granitic intrusions and Paleozoic limestone. Discovered in the early 1880s, the open-pit and underground workings were heavily mined for magnetite ore until the early 1900s to support the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company steel mill in Pueblo. Today, the abandoned mine site is a celebrated locality among mineral collectors, renowned for producing exceptional tabular hematite pseudomorphs after magnetite (commonly called iron roses), Uralite hornblende pseudomorphs after pyroxene, epidote, garnet, and vibrant blue epidote-associated quartz crystals.

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