Spessartine

specimen number:
8311473

location:
Little Three Mine, San Diego Co., California, USA

description:

Lustrous gemmy naturally etched crystal of spessartine. Classic stuff for this locality. Complete all around with no points of attachment and in excellent condition. Wonderful thumbnail.

The Little Three Mine, located near Ramona in San Diego County, California, is a premier gemstone locality situated within the Peninsular Ranges Batholith. Geologically, the site is famous for its highly zoned granitic pegmatite dikes, specifically the Little Three dike, which consists of a footwall of aplite and a hanging wall of coarse-grained pegmatite containing pocket-rich zones. The mine is world-renowned for its exceptional spessartine garnets, which occur as brilliant, etched, or sharp trapezohedral crystals with a distinctive orange to reddish-orange color, often found in association with schorl, elbaite, and smoky quartz. Historically, mining and quarrying at the site began following its discovery in 1903 by H.W. Switzer, with the most significant period of commercial production occurring under the operation of Louis B. Spaulding from the mid-1950s through the 1990s. This era of operation was particularly notable for the discovery of the New Spaulding Pocket in 1975, which produced some of the finest spessartine specimens ever found in the United States. As of 2026, the Little Three Mine remains a legendary name in American mineralogy, highly valued for its unique pocket paragenesis and its legacy of producing top-tier garnet specimens.

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