Tetradymite with Gold, Quartz

specimen number:
1115238

location:
Golden Crest Mine, Summit Co., Colorado, USA

description:
Metallic tetradymite throughout a massive quartz matrix with minor native gold. The specimen comes with a previous label from the company Minerals Unlimited.

The Golden Crest mine, situated in the high-alpine Breckenridge mining district of Summit County, Colorado, United States, was a notable late-nineteenth-century underground gold mining operation located along the rich mineralized belts of the Colorado Mineral Belt. Geologically, this deposit consists of hydrothermal polymetallic veins and stockworks hosted within structurally complex host rocks, primarily Cretaceous-age Pierre Shale and Tertiary-age monzonite porphyry stocks and sills. Ancient high-temperature magmatic-hydrothermal fluids filled these local faults and fracture networks, precipitating native gold and gold-bearing pyrite alongside secondary base-metal sulfides like galena, sphalerite, and chalcopyrite within a dominant quartz and carbonate gangue matrix. Historically, active prospecting and development on the property began during the regional mining boom of the early 1880s, with the Golden Crest Mining Company systematically driving tunnels and sinking shafts to exploit the gold-bearing veins. The mine operated with fluctuating success through the late 1880s and 1890s, supporting localized milling operations until declining ore grades, high transportation costs at high altitude, and complex sulfide metallurgy made continued extraction economically unviable, leading to a permanent cessation of regular underground mining operations around 1901.

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