Tetradymite
specimen number:
2262309
location:
White Elephant Mine, Vernon, British Columbia, Canada
description: The White Elephant mine, situated near Liddell Creek on the west side of Okanagan Lake near Vernon, British Columbia, Canada, was a historically significant and mineralogically unique gold property. Geologically, the deposit is characterized by a massive, irregular lens of vitreous, glassy quartz that measures over 15 meters in width, hosted within a Middle Jurassic-age granodiorite batholith. Hydrothermal fluids circulating through fractures in the host intrusive rock deposited localized, high-grade pockets of massive pyrrhotite, pyrite, chalcopyrite, and native gold, heavily intergrown with rare bismuth telluride minerals, most notably exceptional aggregates of tetradymite. Historically, the outcrop was first discovered and staked in 1912 by Archie Clarke, but formal industrial development did not accelerate until 1921 under the Okanagan Premier Mines Company, which sank a 30-meter vertical shaft and established multiple underground drift levels. The mine was worked intermittently by various operators and consolidated syndicates through the 1920s and 1930s, shipping high-grade gold and bismuth ores to regional smelters until structural instability, high pumping costs, and the erratic nature of the ore shoots forced the permanent cessation of all commercial underground mining operations at the site by 1935.
A set of massive pieces, these hosting bright metallic masses of tetradymite. Neat for the species, this is from the 1960s or earlier. The size provided is the size of the box.
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