Quartz with Barite, Fluorite

specimen number:
2292153

location:
Rock Candy Mine, Grand Forks, British Columbia, Canada

description:
Large plate of crystallized fluorite with coated with colorless crystallized quartz. Several tabular crystals of barite measuring to 2.5 cm in size are present, as well as a light green octahedral fluorite crystal. This is in good condition.

The Rock Candy mine, located near Grand Forks in the Boundary District of southern British Columbia, Canada, is a historic underground fluorspar deposit. Geologically, the deposit consists of a large hydrothermal replacement vein and breccia zone hosted within Eocene-aged syenite of the Coryell Plutonic Suite. The mineralization was formed by low-temperature hydrothermal fluids filling fractures and replacing the host rock, resulting in a mineral assemblage dominated by green and purple fluorite, tabular barite, and quartz, which frequently form crystal-lined vugs. Discovered in 1916 and subsequently acquired by the Consolidated Mining and Smelting Company of Canada, underground operations commenced in 1918 to produce fluorite for use as an industrial flux at the Trail smelter. Production ran intermittently until 1929, when corporate mining operations permanently ceased due to sufficient stockpiles and shifting economic factors, leaving the site accessible primarily to mineral collectors.

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