Wagnerite with Quartz

specimen number:
1052585

location:
Hollgraben, Werfen, St. Johann im Pongau, Salzburg, Austria

description:
Crystals of wagnerite across the top of matrix with quartz. The specimen comes with an antique label as shown at the end of the video. This label gives an acquisition date for this piece of 1907.

The Hoellgraben valley, situated near Werfen within the St. Johann im Pongau District of Salzburg, Austria, is a highly celebrated mineralogical locality renowned for serving as the international type locality for the magnesium phosphate mineral wagnerite. Geologically, this unique deposit is characterized by low-temperature hydrothermal quartz-breunnerite veins that cut sharply through Paleozoic-age clay schists and carbonatites along the northern border of the Eastern Alps. During the fluid-circulation phases of regional tectonic deformation, phosphorus and fluorine-rich aqueous solutions reacted intensely with the magnesium-dominant host rocks, allowing thick, blocky, and prismatic crystals of yellowish-white to reddish-brown translucent wagnerite to crystallize in open vein vugs alongside deep blue lazulite, clinochlore, and magnesite. Historically, the Hoellgraben locality was never developed into a large-scale industrial underground or open-cast ore mine, as the non-metallic phosphate minerals held no commercial value. Instead, the area has been worked strictly as a specialized specimen-quarrying site by mineralogists and local collectors since the mineral was first discovered and officially described by Johann Georg Lenz in 1821, who named it in honor of the Bavarian mining official Franz von Wagner. Small-scale, highly selective surface digging along the exposed valley outcrops and stream beds has occurred sporadically for over two centuries and continues under local safety guidelines through 2026, preserving Hoellgraben wagnerite as an iconic, historically vital benchmark of Austrian alpine mineralogy.

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